THE seamless Web & native experience:
Make it happen
SIDEREEL HAD ONE LAST CHANCE AT RELEVANCE.
A pocket acquisition of Rovi Corporation, Sidereel, had experienced what everyone in the office referred to as the Googlepocalypse just before I joined the team. Once a dark web, semi-legal streaming service – think Napster for TV shows – Sidereel had recently lost all its ad revenue when Google cracked down on shady actors on its ad platform, and had to find a new, legitimate service to provide to cord-cutting binge watchers , or it would croak.
PRODUCT TRANSFORMATION
SIDEREEL•2013
The choice: make it a binge-tracking app connected to the entertainment world
Instead of a place where you could find pirated TV shows, we would make Sidereel your binge-watching servant, keeping track of which shows you watched, and when the next show will premiere.
Using Rovi’s extensive TV-connected data library, we would provide the Netflix-Style TV show menu across all emerging OTT and streaming platforms. Think back to 2013, and how useful it would have been to live out the next decade with a connected companion for all your streaming services. If only Sidereel could have survived.
when your palette should be a rainbow…
In the design guide, I broke down the way we could be a neutral but stylish platform for the rainbow of TV choices. I built in achievable 3d pseudo-elements and microtextures on fashionable gray backgrounds. In the brand strategy I revived personas to the new product offering and gave the service a character: your agnostic and loyal servant, unbound by the rules of where and how you should consume your TV.
Sadly, Sidereel was discarded by Rovi soon after the design of the Tablet App. Had Rovi had more vision and patience with this scrappy, happy little rogue’s gallery, we could have seen Sidereel providing a major service to today’s dominant cord-cutter culture.