A Bespoke cable box VOD platform

NBC is one of the largest television production and distribution companies globally, with a primary client base in North America. Known for being at the forefront of technological innovation in the industry, NBC has built a reputation for pioneering change. However, as the company grew in size and complexity, legacy technology began to pose challenges, hindering its ability to stay ahead in an increasingly fast-paced market. In response to this, a new Video On Demand (VOD) team was established to drive innovation and develop fresh, exciting propositions for all customers within the NBCU ecosystem, helping the company evolve and meet the needs of a rapidly changing landscape.

NBCU serves a diverse user base across the USA, with varying subscription tiers and equipment types. In particular, they aimed to expand their reach among smaller locations using cable boxes in anticipation of upcoming events.

Given the wide variability in cable providers and box technology, the solution needed to be designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring it could deliver a reliable and satisfactory user experience, even for users with the most basic equipment. This approach was crucial to ensuring all users, regardless of their technology level, could engage with the platform seamlessly.

This proposition drew inspiration from successful VOD platforms like Peacock, NBCU’s flagship paid service. We started by assessing the technology and understanding our constraints. While we could look to Peacock for guidance, it became clear that our platform would face limitations due to the varying hardware of users’ cable boxes.

With this in mind, we opted to stick to HTML standards for compatibility, but had to scale back on premium features and animations to accommodate the technical capabilities of the cable box hardware.

The team, spread across six different time zones, was truly global — a testament to how, even in the most challenging of circumstances, humans can come together and succeed. During this time, I sought a way to bridge the gaps in communication and help the team grasp the intricacies of our design decisions. That’s when I discovered Loom, a simple Chrome plugin that allowed us to create screencasts and share our thought processes in real time.

The impact was immediate and powerful — not only did it help our team collaborate more effectively, but NBCU was so impressed with its utility that they later integrated Loom into their main suite of products, proving how a small tool could make a big difference in fostering global teamwork.