With video-on-demand swiftly becoming the viewing platform of choice for consumers up and down the UK, Channel 5 badly needed to whip its service into shape. With a total rebrand in motion, the all new My5 needed a UX design overhaul from the inside out, guided by its viewers.

Around half the total population in the UK use video-on-demand (VOD) to stream their favourite TV shows. So popular are streaming services that the VOD market is projected to grow 7% by 2027, with linear TV – live shows on the box – falling rapidly.

With strong competition from the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Channel 4’s ‘All 4’ and the Beeb’s ‘BBC iPlayer’, Channel 5 was getting left behind. It came to us for help with a total rebrand, turning its outdated ‘Demand 5’ VOD platform into the all new ‘My5’ – which we’re sure you know (and love) by now.

With this major rebrand came the opportunity to gut the inner-workings of Channel 5’s existing streaming platform. Disjointed, inconsistent, old and clunky, it left viewers frustrated by a poor user experience (UX) and hampered any meaningful improvement. Channel 5 asked us to wipe the slate clean, integrating new smart TV and mobile apps, a website redesign and a back-end update into My5.

The big picture? Increase viewing numbers, advertising revenue and overall user satisfaction.

Watching viewers watch us

Our approach was to make sure that every design concept was rigorously user tested and decisions based on user research – from real people, up and down the breadth of the UK. This stretched from running dozens of individual user interviews, to mass research projects involving over 10,000 people. What did we learn? No two people watch TV in the same way; some watch in bed, on mute with subtitles, many cast from their phone to the TV, while others only watch programmes recommended to them by their friends. All of these insights guided our design process and decision making. We also turned up the volume on market research, undertaking extensive competitor analysis to understand and set benchmarks for viewer expectations.

Once we’d run an in-depth technical audit of the platform, our UX design team began in earnest. Working with InVision prototypes, we created a fake living room in our offices, so we could bring in viewers to road test and validate every design iteration, then feed it back into the next round of design updates. We then launched products in a series of stages – MVPs that would be constantly built upon – moving from a basic VOD platform to adding features we knew our viewers wanted like live TV channels, a dedicated kids section (Milkshake) and more.

Throughout all of this, every design iteration would sit in front of groups of users, constantly stress-tested and scrutinised, with bright ideas wrapped into the next round of features and functionalities. Although, clearly, revenue was an important factor for Channel 5, our design approach put the viewer first, it gave them a voice. We believe, if you do this, success will always follow.

Back to the cutting room

Of course, a project like this doesn’t come without a few mountains to climb. Today’s VOD viewers have incredibly high expectations – with services like Netflix to compare to – and these expectations also change all the time, as the market evolves. Equally, Channel 5 itself has a vast network of stakeholders, each feeding into the vision and bringing with them many moving parts. The refresh also needed to cater to everyone and anyone in the UK, including best practice accessibility requirements. So we did bags of user testing with members of the public that had various impairments, focusing on text size and legibility, colour contrasts and navigation.

But, above all, Channel 5 had an old CMS and a huge library of existing content that needed integrating into the new designs in a logical and rational way. When the old system is a dinosaur, that’s a little scary. Of course, Channel 5 had to make changes to their existing systems to make this happen, namely its configuration service and APIs for video metadata that tell the platform things like where to store half-watched programmes. But as they couldn’t completely rebuild, we had to be smart about the techniques employed when sending data from the backend to the frontend.

We also had to find an efficient way to build the frontend, to deadline and on budget, whilst the backend was still in flux. It’s a bit like calmly taking someone’s order whilst the kitchen is on fire. Add to that multiplatform delivery, across Roku, iOS, Android, TV and synchronising three different teams to all deliver the same closely matched architecture and it’s…tricky. Luckily for us though, we caught a break with the ad integration. My5 uses server-side ad integration, which means the ads are stitched into the programme from the source. So the pre, mid and post-roll are all served beautifully.

Viewership on demand

My5’s design overhaul worked. Hooking in millions of new users, video consumption witnessed a significant boost, with a 300% increase in active users since launch and a two-fold increase in viewing time per session. It represents a seismic shift in viewership for Channel 5, bringing its VOD service into the present and future-proofing it for years to come. More importantly, great UX put it back on the map, increasing user satisfaction with a new app store rating of 4.7 stars.

Overall, the work was a resounding success. During 2022, My5 saw its third consecutive year of growth across streams and watch time. Echoing its success on the linear channel, drama was a key growth driver, with three of the top four launches of all time during 2022 – The Teacher, The Holiday and Maxine. And it continues – we remain a trusted partner for Channel 5 as its video technology grows. It’s not always about what’s on the box, it’s about what’s outside of it.

“Channel 5 have had a close working relationship with [the Agency] for over 4 years. As a trusted partner, they have designed and built multiple applications across mobile, desktop and large screen devices. This relationship success is based on true close collaboration with [the Agency’s] product designers and developers who work as an extension of the Channel 5 team. Continuously delivering within tight deadlines, their ability to work at speed is matched with high quality delivery. We have gone on to target optimisations of performance, design and features leading us to have the highest rated mobile products of any of our peers.”

-Ashley Fletcher

Senior Director, Product Paramount International