Senior UX/UI Designer, Android Lead
All4
August 2018 - September 2019
All4 Streaming Application, Native Android
All4 is the on-demand streaming experience for Channel4 with over 500k monthly active users on the android platform.
I led the Android design efforts for the All4 mobile application. I served as the liaison between the greater Channel4 design team and the android engineering team during a successful organization-wide rebrand, and provided regular UX maintenance.
Goal
I joined the team at the very beginning of a re-brand. We received a rudimentary brand guide from the creative team with the basics. Logos, color, typography, and imagery were provided, but it was up to the platform designers to decide how to bring them to life. I needed to make decisions for how the brand would behave, and co-ordinate this with the android team so all the platforms could release the brand at the same time.
Typography
Channel 4 had two unique typefaces. The sans-serif worked well as the default interface typeface, but there were very few places the decorative headline could be used. Since this typeface was so iconic to the Channel4 brand, it was important we found a place for it. Because the main app navigation headlines were larger and support from the bottom navigation labels, this ended up being the perfect spot to showcase the extra bold italic font.
Color
When building out an interface color system, it is important to think of colors representing a quality or having a specific purpose. The new brand guide emphasized 5 colors. Teal and Yellow had been given equal importance, while neutral colors acted as text and background. We decided Channel4 Teal would be the perfect action color in our interface, so we assigned it to actionable UI elements like play buttons, active navigation, or very high emphasis labels. Yellow would become our status indication color - used to show play bar or download progress. The darkest grey we used for lowest elevation backgrounds, while the medium grey was used in higher elevation that would be layered above (like the app and bottom navigation bars).
Respecting the Platform
Each platform has its own needs. For Android, I injected the All4 brand into Material Design components. Unlike other systems, Android runs on many devices. I checked our analytics and found many of our users were on the Kindle Fire device, which had a very horizontal aspect ratio. Because of this, I developed a customized layout for our tablet users so they wouldn’t miss a thing.