Thumbplay

Thumbplay Music is a subscription-based streaming music service. In 2009, gearing up for the first release of GoogleTV, Thumbplay Music approached Method to design their TV experience.  

We did research by testing out a beta-version of the GoogleTV platform, and by doing so we learned firsthand the frustrations of navigating complex systems with the supplied IPTV remote control. It became very clear that this needed to be a 10' lean-back experience.

We landed on a very simple interaction model. Up-and-down to navigate through lists (menus) and 1-2 clicks from left-to-right to navigate to the "now playing" queue. A wayfinding system of cascading menus was developed to show the user how to navigate backwards.