The Problem

A+E had no subscription product

The business goal was to create HISTORY's first subscription video-on-demand product. There was no existing SVOD foundation to build on, no established patterns, and a hard commercial need to get to market.

The Constraint

Roku first, and fast

We needed HISTORY Vault on Roku quickly. So we gathered around a table and brainstormed what the OTT app should be and do. That speed requirement shaped everything: it meant designing for the most constrained platform first — a TV remote, a ten-foot interface with limited interaction at that time.

Launch

Roku, then everywhere

HISTORY Vault launched on Roku, then rolled out across five platforms: Roku, Apple TV, iOS, Android, and Web. Each brought its own conventions at the time of this design. Each had to feel native to its platform while remaining recognizably one product.

Roku TV interface

iOS

From ten feet to ten inches

The Roku design gave us a structure simple enough to work with, the remote and a directional pad. Rather than shrinking the TV layout onto a phone, I rebuilt browsing so a viewer moving from their phone to their TV never had to relearn the product.

iOS app interface

Android

Native conventions, one product

Android users expected Android. At the time, I designed to Material Design conventions rather than mirroring the iOS app so the product felt native rather than transplanted. The harder line to hold was between platform-native and brand-consistent: the interaction patterns had to change, while the content hierarchy, structure, and identity stayed recognizably the same product across all five platforms.

Android app interface

Web

One product, every screen size

I designed the web experience to reflow around the content model rather than optimize for a single breakpoint: the same collections, the same hierarchy whether it opened on a thirteen-inch screen or a thirty-inch one. The product stayed recognizably itself across every device.

Responsive web interface for desktop and mobile browsers

Lifetime Movie Club

A second product, a different viewer

Within a year, Lifetime Movie Club launched a second SVOD product across the same five platforms, built on the shared foundation A+E had developed rather than from scratch. Same platform conventions, entirely different problem: where HISTORY Vault organized hundreds of hours of episodic documentaries, Lifetime Movie Club surfaced a library of exclusive movies for a different audience.

Building for a second brand tested the foundation: the shared platform conventions worked, but the brand identity, content hierarchy, and browsing patterns had to serve Lifetime Movie Club's audience and library structure differently than HISTORY Vault's documentary archive.

iOS app interface

Android app interface

Responsive web design for all screen sizes

Outcome

Two subscription products, each running across five platforms — ten platform launches in total. HISTORY Vault took a year to reach all five. Lifetime Movie Club took six months. The second product shipped in half the time because it didn't start from zero: the platform conventions, components, and patterns already existed. Both products are still live on all 5 platforms and are still being iterated on today.