Who we were designing for
Three users. Three completely different relationships with the platform.
The prospect had never engaged with +play and did not understand why they should. The default user had subscriptions sitting there automatically but rarely visited. The mature user had been there for months and needed a reason to keep exploring.
The existing architecture served all three the same way and worked for none of them.
The concept
We collapsed the architecture into a single adaptive feed. Instead of separate destinations for discover, shop, and manage, everything lived in one experience that responded to who you were.
A prospect saw platform education and featured services. A default user saw savings they were missing and services that complemented what they had. A mature user saw new content, editorial recommendations, and category browsing that rewarded returning.
Search became a discovery tool. The checkout flow was anchored by the content itself. No separate flows. No navigating away from the thing that made you want to subscribe.
What happened
Leadership's reaction was not "ship this." It was "this is the direction." The full vision required personalization infrastructure that was not on the roadmap. But the architectural thinking influenced how the team approached every major decision that followed.
The North Star did not ship. It changed how we thought about the product.
