Product Design Lead
HBO Max becomes Max.
Once HBO Max transferred hands to Discovery (becoming Max), it grew fast. In year one, it relaunched in the US, then into 70+ new markets. As design lead for Profiles, Kids and Compliance, this was a big effort as:
- Max shed the old platform. All Web, mobile and TV apps had to be rebuilt.
- Compliance regulations and kids’ content varied per market. That multiplied design requirements.
To manage the work swell, I defined 2 principles upfront.
- Let’s work as a global team. With each market launch, I onboarded designers. To support rapport and exchange, I spun up Slack channels, created a character library of raw art. This also helped fill the designer deficit. Designers could lean on each other to meet deadlines.
- Let’s pay capabilities forward. I built Figma and PSD templates for common assets. This way, designers could reuse or spin up variants fast.
Designing for scale
Profile Pages
Profiles consist of: profile pictures, profile creation and management, parental controls and content restrictions. Page elements often changed to keep pace with compliance law. And sometimes varied by market. For example, in APAC (Asia-Pacific), all mature titles are PIN-protected on adult profiles.
To manage updates and variants, all page elements were built as components. This way, if a page was grabbed by another team, it would inherit future updates. It behaved like a design system within a design system. Updating a core component would update TV, mobile and Web instances, including A11y readout.
Character Library
Characters rule on kids pages. They are featured in character rows, fan pages, and hero imagery. I built a shared character library, making it easy to retrieve raw images. Prior, a designer would have to request and wait for raw images. Having a centralized library of 1,000+ assets let designers focus on design.
Character Row
The character row has highest engagement on kids pages. I designed Figma templates to align and simplify designs. This makes it easy to dress up 175+ characters. Specs are built in, extending ownership to all incoming designers.
Kids profile
I created Figma templates to space letters consistently.
I built a Photoshop tool to let designers turn line art into instant neon variants. It’s rewarding to see how partners use the tool to promote content in their regions.
Results
Delivered on-time assets, pages and specs to support 70+ market launches in 1 year. All of this, while supporting everyday merchandising requirements for active markets.