VIDAA Smart TV.

Design Innovation Program

Summary of Activity

1. Discovery - Contextualize Problem

2. Diverge - Ideate & Create

3. Coverage - Refine & Decide

4. Visioning - Framing Innovation & IP

Contextual & Market Research

Before designing anything, we had to understand the world we were designing for. That meant immersing the team in the Chinese market - the cultural context, the technology landscape, the trends shaping where TV was going.

We studied the 10-foot experience specifically: how people actually interact with a screen from across a room, with a remote, from a couch.

Design Research & Insights

From that immersion we built our own interaction and visual design patterns, and developed a completely new operating model for the 10-foot experience - a tvOS designed around the simplicity of a standard remote control.

Project Planning & Concepts

We synthesized a point of view, defined guiding principles, and then moved fast - a proof of concept in six weeks.

Concept Elaboration

Remote Control Design

Designing a simple TV required the redesign of the remote control. Every button we took away from the remote, we had to then build in SW.

Prototyping the Vision

We developed robust motion studies and product prototypes to validate and circulate the core experience. This methodology mitigated development concerns, de-risked product features, and allowed us to surface design intent.

Stakeholder Review & Sign-off

We synthesized a point of view, defined guiding principles, and then moved fast - a proof of concept in two to three weeks. We took it to China and presented it to Hisense. They were overwhelmingly pleased. That moment locked in the direction and gave the team the mandate to keep going.

Design Elaboration Program

Getting from vision to ship across five hardware generations required a design system that could survive engineering, localization, and manufacturing realities in two countries.

I was responsible for product feature decisions at both the OS and application level - determining what went into tvOS, how features were prioritized, and how they were expressed across the product.

Summary of Activity

1. High Level Design -Explore Direction

2. Foundation - Design Systems

3. Detail design- Crafting Products

4. Construction - Implementation Support

Building the Product

Working with engineering to unblock delivery was a constant. High-level design sets direction without over-committing.

Five generations. Twenty-five million devices.

Foundation Design

The Foundation stage built the design system - components, motion, interaction states - before detail design began.

Detail Design

Detail design was where the craft lived: every screen, every state, every edge case. Construction meant staying in the room with engineering until it shipped right.

Magical Moments

Product Experience

Design Leadership

Hisense needed a Smart TV that could differentiate its product line. Flextronics had a design team looking to prove its value after Imerj.

I took a core of six designers and redirected them fast - from mobile to television, from a cancelled product to a net-new one. The goal wasn't just to design a better TV. It was to build a valued design organization.

That meant managing stakeholders across two organizations, advocating for design to have the space to do its best work, and making product decisions before the process was fully defined.

I mentored the team, raised the quality of our design artifacts to meet hardware documentation standards, and built design ops, design direction, and program management in paralle.

Summary of Activity

1. Design Org +Recruiting + Hiring

2. Design Studio + Design Ops

3. Language + Design Systems

4. Creative / Design Direction & Oversight

5. Project + Program Management