My Role

As a creative individual, ideas constantly run through my mind. In this personal project my role as Conceptual Designer was to put into practice my skills to flush out some of those ideas for a Smart TV App.

What if your Smart TV could be even Smarter?

This idea sparked up after I had received a Google Mini (Google Home) which then got me thinking of all the possibilities a smart and automated Home could be. My goal with this conceptual app design was to create a Smart TV App that would serve as the main piece of Entertainment for the family and the Central Control Hub for all smart devices.

The Process

My process was very simple, I first started out by exploring and researching existing apps and designs that were available out there. Then I created a list of features I personally wanted in a Smart TV App. I did not start off with a basic structure, I just wanted to make this design enjoyable, and not put much constraints on my ideas.

I was inspired by existing video streaming apps like those of YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, and Plex TV as the main feature for this app but for some reason they all seemed to fall short of what TV could be made for now days.

The Central Hub

Features

After analyzing my daily use of apps, gadgets, and smart devices I started to list features and integrations that I felt it was necessary to fulfil a Smart Home needs. Below is the list:

Displayed Features:

  • Smart Home Control Hub (Google Home, Phillips HUE, Nest, Arlo)
  • Video Streaming (Cinema, Movies, TV Shows, YouTube)
  • Music Streaming (Spotify, Apple Music)
  • Play Games (Game Central)
  • Photos Gallery (Internet, Dropbox, Google Drive, Media Devices)
  • Social Media (Twitter, Instagram)

Other Features:

  • Finance/Stocks (ETrade, Robinhood, Acorns)
  • Video Surveillance (Security Cameras, Lights, Alarms, Devices)
  • Video Conference Calls (WebEx, FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp)
  • Weather Forecast
  • News (News Channels, Magazines, Blogs, Internet)

In Theatres

Movies

TV Shows

Games

Music

Photos

Social Media

In Conclusion

This was a small personal project I've been wanting to do for quite a while now. It took me a period of 7 days working on my spare time to fully design what you see above. Of course there are a lot of improvements I could make and a lot more features and screens I could add to this design to make this into a real app project, but this was not the goal here. The goal was to have a little bit of fun with a project that had no guidelines or requirements, purely some ideas I had flushed into some pixels.

Hopefully, one day I get to build fun apps like this one that serve to solve a lot of our daily struggles of having to juggle multiple apps and tasks from all the different services out there. One Central Hub.