Magenta TV
Shaping a complex entertainment product over time, with practical attention to usability, delivery, and platform constraints.
- Role
- Sole Designer → Lead Designer
- Timeline
- 3.5-Year Engagement
- Team
- Product, Engineering, QA, Client Stakeholders
- Platform
- Mobile Tablet TV
Magenta TV across platforms
Selected product views from Magenta TV across phone, tablet, and living-room screens, including work that extended to Magenta TV Stick.
Overview
A long-term product story across mobile and TV.
Magenta TV was a long-term engagement with Deutsche Telekom, spanning mobile, tablet, and TV experiences over 3.5 years.
My work began with the mobile redesign, later expanded into TV, and included owning the Apple TV app from start to finish.
The product covered live TV, VOD, catch-up, replay, recordings, and network PVR, so the experience had to support many ways of watching and returning to content.
Role Evolution
My role evolved from sole designer to lead designer, and later sole designer for the Apple TV app from start to finish.
I worked across wireframes, UI design, competitor benchmarking, design audits, UX recommendations, and feedback process improvements.
I worked closely with product managers, engineers, QA, and client stakeholders to keep design decisions connected to user stories, technical constraints, and delivery needs.
Product Context
Magenta TV is Deutsche Telekom's entertainment service for live TV, VOD, catch-up, replay, recordings, and premium content.
The work spanned mobile, tablet, and TV, each with different browsing, viewing, and input needs.
Goals
- Redesign and improve the Magenta TV mobile experience
- Translate Deutsche Telekom's UX/UI direction into clear product flows
- Improve key viewing flows across live TV, VOD, catch-up, replay, and recordings
- Own the Apple TV app design from start to finish
- Keep design decisions aligned with user stories, platform needs, and implementation constraints
- Provide recommendations for mobile, Apple TV, Android TV Stick, and STB experiences
Challenges
- Supporting a long-term product engagement across several delivery phases
- Making complex entertainment flows clear on both small screens and TV screens
- Designing for touch, remote control, and viewing distance
- Keeping design decisions clear as user stories, technical constraints, and delivery needs changed over time
- Accounting for TV-specific details such as overscan areas, remote-control buttons, native controls, and custom components
- Making feedback clear enough for both client discussions and developer handoff
Design Approach
The approach combined design audits, benchmarking, hands-on UX/UI design, and improvements to how feedback moved through the team.
I reviewed screens and design direction from Deutsche Telekom, identified where the experience needed to adapt, and shaped solutions within product and technical constraints.
I also introduced a clearer feedback process, making customer conversations easier to follow and helping developers get the context they needed.
Mobile Wireframes
The mobile redesign began with wireframes to explore navigation, content discovery, and key viewing flows across live TV, VOD, catch-up, replay, and recordings.
These selected views show some of the core decisions behind the experience, including the home/browse structure, episodic content detail, and live programme detail.
They helped define the structure for the mobile UI work that followed.
Wireframe image pending
Home
Main entry point for browsing live, on-demand, and recommended content.
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Wireframe image pending
Series detail
Structure for episodic content, metadata, seasons, and playback actions.
Wireframe image pending
Live detail
Live programme view with key information, playback actions, and supporting details.
Mobile UI Design
Later UI work turned the product direction into a more polished Magenta TV mobile experience.
These selected views show browsing, live TV discovery, and content detail patterns that stayed close to platform conventions and the Magenta TV brand.
Screen image pending
Home
Primary entry point for browsing live, on-demand, and recommended content.
Screen image pending
EPG
Programme guide UI for browsing live TV schedules and upcoming content.
Screen image pending
Series detail
Title detail screen with metadata, playback options, seasons, and supporting recommendations.
TV & Apple TV Design
Later in the engagement, I was the sole designer for the Apple TV app from start to finish, adapting the Magenta TV experience for a TV-first context.
The work followed the established Magenta TV design language, while leaving room for ideas that made the user experience on TV clearer.
For live TV, I designed the production EPG used in the shipped Apple TV app. I also explored a separate EPG concept to improve readability, hierarchy, and programme discovery. The concept was presented to Deutsche Telekom and received very positive feedback, but was not implemented due to time constraints.
Screen image pending
Home
TV-first browsing experience adapted for remote navigation, viewing distance, and content discovery.
Screen image pending
Movie detail
Content detail screen adapted for TV viewing, with metadata, key actions, and supporting information.
Screen image pending
Production EPG
Live TV programme guide used in the shipped Apple TV app for schedule browsing and discovery.
Screen image pending
EPG concept
Concept only—not shipped. Explored clearer hierarchy, readability, and programme discovery for Apple TV.
Outcome
The work contributed to Magenta TV across mobile, tablet, and TV over a long engagement.
I helped redesign core mobile flows, extend them to living-room experiences, and keep decisions grounded in how each device is used.
The Apple TV work drew especially positive feedback from Deutsche Telekom stakeholders and internal OTT colleagues, who highlighted the design, usability, and overall quality of the experience.
3 platforms
Mobile, tablet, and TV
Apple TV
Sole designer from start to finish
Long-term
Product design engagement
Cross-platform
Shared experience logic
Quote
“I got a message from some of our internal OTT colleagues stating that the Apple TV client is by far the best Magenta TV client so far. The design, performance, usability, everything is just great.”
Learnings
- Long-term product work needs clear principles, but also room for each platform's realities.
- A shared design direction still needs careful adaptation for each device, input method, and viewing context.
- TV experiences need extra attention to navigation, focus states, remote controls, and viewing distance.
- Close collaboration with product, engineering, QA, and client stakeholders helped keep design decisions grounded in delivery.
- Improving the feedback process made collaboration clearer and helped the team move more smoothly.
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