Disney Movies Anywhere

Android Design & Development

Disney Movies Anywhere

Disney Movies Anywhere (2014) allowed users to link Disney films purchased on iTunes Store and other digital services into a unified library.

I got an opportunity to redesign DMA for Android just before launch, making it one of the first apps to adopt Material Design.

role

Senior Android Developer, Product Designer

Contribution

DMA for Android, Android TV, & Amazon Fire
Design system using Android styles
UI development, animations, & transitions
Chromecast client & receiver
Video player & accessibility features
Movies Anywhere prototype
Training & mentoring designers

Tools

Android Studio, Illustrator, Photoshop

Design Story

Dawn of Material Design

Material Design was introduced at Google IO in 2014 as a revolutionary design update to reinvigorate the platform. It would be part of the next Android OS update coming out that fall.

Disney Movies Anywhere was scheduled to be released at the same time.

Material Design examples introduced at Google IO 2014

Laying the groundwork

I was excited about Material Design and did my best to update the UI where I could. My design contributions to DMA include the Chromecast client & receiver, the video player, and native interfaces.

I also refactored the app to use XML styles (Android SDK’s built-in design system). This made it easier to apply uniform design changes throughout the app.

DMA for iOS vs. DMA for Android

Design conflicts

Many high-profile companies were releasing Android apps that looked like iOS knockoffs. Android users were frustrated about being treated as “second class citizens”.

The design for DMA was completed months before Google announced Material Design. As such, the design & product teams were reluctant to go back and make changes, despite the fact that their design was heavily influenced by iOS 6. (They were also all iPhone users.)

Material Design goes live

Six weeks before our launch, Google released the full Material Design SDK for developers. More important, they updated the highly visible Play Store to use Material Design.

As one of the only Android users on the team, Disney’s VP of Technology discovered the Play Store update, called me aside, and asked if I could mock up something similar.

Of course I could!

Google Play Store's first Material Design update, October 2014

Video Player: before & after slider

My impact

I branched the project and spent the next two weeks updating the app to use the new SDK. I applied Material Design as I felt best while considering time constraints.

My version caused some intense debates among the teams and stakeholders. But ultimately we implemented my redesign.

Android 5.0 with Material Design was released on November 3, 2014.

DMA for Android launched the next day.

As soon as the new SDK was released, I spent two weeks working on a proof of concept using the new Material Design component library.

My update caused some intense debates among the teams and stakeholders, but ultimately the redesign was implemented for the launch.

We received very positive reviews for the launch and the Android app ranked a full-star higher than the iOS release. In press reviews, the tech sites were overwhelmingly positive.