Designing a new TV layout aligned with industry standards to create a more engaging and easier experience, while establishing the foundation for the core personalization feature.
Plex combines free movies & TV with the best free streaming services, along with your own organized media collection, accessible anywhere and on nearly any device.
The Challenge
With millions of unique cover art pieces and a highly diverse user base—ranging from casual viewers to dedicated media enthusiasts—Plex needed a solution to prominently showcase this content artwork, highlight key metadata at a glance, and adapt dynamically to various screen resolutions and user preferences.
All of this had to be achieved without fragmenting the codebase into multiple versions or platforms.
Defining the vision
We aimed to develop a modern layout that highlights media art as the focal point, with inline metadata such as genre badges, ratings, and a brief synopsis. This design allows users to decide what to watch with fewer clicks.
The main challenge we faced was the diversity of hardware and user preferences. Televisions come in various resolutions and brightness levels, and users have different habits and tastes. Therefore, our solution needed to be both visually appealing and highly customizable.
Exploration & Community-Driven Experimentation
We created several layout options internally and ultimately chose a design that used background colors from each poster to create an immersive backdrop.
To gather feedback, we utilized Plex’s existing “Experimental Features” opt-in program to recruit a group of power users and community members. Over several weeks, we received more than 350 comments on the forum thread, providing us with real-time feedback on contrast, typography, and badging.
Iterative Design Sprints & Feedback Loops
During fast-paced design studio sessions, we organized feedback into key themes, such as contrast issues, the legibility of inline metadata, and animation smoothness. We then developed new builds in a matter of days.
Each build was redeployed to our test users, allowing for ongoing refinement until we achieved a layout that effectively balanced the prominence of artwork with information density.
Finalizing Settings & Deployment Strategy
Instead of imposing a single "Modern" default on all users, we created three independent settings that allow for multiple personalization configurations.
This way, each user can customize their experience to suit their preferences.
We initially rolled out the feature to company members and beta-channel users, then gradually expanded it to the public on Roku, Apple TV, and Android TV.