Since the beginning of 2013, we have been working with Sky Deutschland to optimize the various Sky products across devices in terms of user experience and usability. The declared goal: to develop user-friendly products that give the user pleasure.

We wanted to find out more about the effects of our work from the customer's perspective. Marco Braun, Head of Product Concept and Delivery at Sky Deutschland, gave us an interview.

In the coeno interview: Marco Braun, Head of Product Concept and Delivery, Sky Deutschland

What does Sky Deutschland understand by user experience?

Sky Deutschland stands for high quality products, exclusive program and excellent service. Our most important concern for the user experience is: Sky customers should - no matter where and with which Sky product they see our program - notice that they are using a Sky product. This value is the first premise for the user experience. In addition to the look and feel of the products, functionality plays an important role, which the user gets only from Sky. Sky Deutschland places the highest demands on its products and pursues correspondingly high UX goals.

How "UX-oriented" does Sky Deutschland consider itself to be?

The user experience is a high priority for Sky, because a positive user experience is an extremely important customer loyalty tool. If a customer likes a product, he will continue to use it and recommend it to others. Our customers enjoy a special advantage that our product is unique on the German market. We are constantly working to further improve UX.

In which projects did you work together with coeno?

The conception and design of the user interfaces of Sky Go, Sky Online and Sky Snap, including the UIs for the smart TV devices of LG and Samsung, the Roku streaming player and a Windows version for the Xbox One, was realized in close cooperation with coeno.

What spoke in favor of commissioning coeno from Sky Deutschland's point of view?

Flexibility, UX know-how and OTT product knowledge. For us, flexibility due to short product development cycles is extremely important. The team of coeno is able to implement all our requirements from consulting to the development of a specification to the development of a visual design, to coordinate with us at short notice and to solve problems quickly.

What concrete services has coeno provided in these projects?

For the online video store Snap coeno created the interaction paradigm in close cooperation with us and helped to develop the specification and the visual design. In the context of the design relaunch of Sky Go, coeno optimized the clarity of our mobile on-demand service and ensured that the user experience is consistent across all devices. During the development of our independent online product Sky Online, the UX specialists supported us in the conception, development support and design of the user interfaces for use via web and iOS apps as well as Smart TV/LG, Roku, Chromecast and the Xbox One. Here, too, the device-independent concept played a major role in the specification requirements.

Were there special problems, wishes or challenges within the projects?

We work within a given project duration and with a fixed budget with the declared aim of developing the best possible product. We have to decide what is really important for our customers and what can be further developed in a next iteration. To be creative within this tight grid and to bring out the optimum - that was and is the special challenge in all our projects.

Are there certain UI design or conception aspects that have become more prominent thanks to coeno?

As a company, we at Sky think solution-oriented. We want to put our projects into action as quickly as possible. coeno supports us in this process e.g. with an early definition of requirements and goals for our products.

What would have been different without coeno?

We would not have been able to maintain the pace of product development as we are doing now.

Is there any feedback from Sky customers?

Today we are no longer perceived only as a television company, but also as an OTT player. Sky Go, for example, has gained enormous relevance, as evidenced by 151 million customer logins in 2014/2015. We have reached a new level of demand.

What conclusions does Sky Deutschland draw from the projects realized with coeno? For which projects would Sky Deutschland particularly recommend coeno?

We experience coeno as a competent consultant in all UX questions. The agency is on the one hand a strong sparring partner along the entire value chain and on the other hand a pragmatic and implementation-strong consultant regarding content concepts, product development and conception processes and UX topics and thus also a reliable partner of Sky.

Thank you for the interview!

About Sky Deutschland

With around 4.3 million customers and annual revenues of around 1.8 billion euros, Sky is the Pay-TV market leader in Germany and Austria. The program offering consists of live sports, feature films, series, children's programs and documentaries. Sky Deutschland has around 2,600 employees and its headquarters are in Unterföhring near Munich. The company is part of Europe's leading entertainment group Sky plc.