Crunchyroll Redesign

Role

Lead Product Designer

Duration

2 Years

Deliverables

Wireframes, interactive prototypes, high fidelity mocks, design system

Problem Summary

The previous site design was outdated and had minimal changes over the last 6+ years. We wanted to redesign the site to not only be more modern, but also address key issues in navigation and content discoverability. This redesign covered the home page, browsing experience, series details page, and the watch page.

Results

The new dark color theme and improved navigation received high praise from users, with general positive comments centered around how much easier it is to find content and start watching a series.

Goals

After a few rounds of user testing on the previous legacy design, we put together a few key goals our redesign should address.

  • Discovery of new content should be improved all around, from finding new seasonal shows, being recommended new shows to watch, and the high level navigation of the website.

  • Improve the watching experience on web and mobile to improve each user’s time on site, increase minutes watched on average, and eventually convert them to a paid premium user.

Deliverables

  • I helped facilitate and run workshops among various BUs around Crunchyroll as well as help run the multiple rounds of user tests up until launch.

  • I was responsible for all of the early wireframes and user flows.

  • With the help of our principal designer I helped establish the visual identity of the new redesigned product and created the new Design System to be used for the entire redesign.

  • Created all of the basic high fidelity mocks and edge states for many of the screens.

  • Once I became Lead Product Designer, I managed a team of 2-4 designers (in the U.S. as well as abroad in Europe), to help create the rest of the features and pages that weren’t the primary series page, watch page, or browsing pages.

Conclusion

With a major overhaul for the first time in many years, we made sure to carefully user test the new design with users through multiple rounds of in-person user testing and multiple prototypes. Through user testing results as well as evaluating quantitative data after beta release, we found that the new dark color theme and improved navigation received high praise from users, with general positive comments centered around how much easier it is to find content and start watching a series.