Strategy & redesign
My Sky app redesign (test)
Redefining how millions of customers manage their Sky products.
I led the future Manage Hub experience, expected to become the My Sky app's primary destination, while also establishing the reusable systems, patterns and cross-product framework needed to scale the experience across product teams.
Impact
+15.6%
Findability across 10 TV & Broadband journeys
100%
Design system adoption on new app pages
Manage Hub north star strategy
Problems and opportunities
Stakeholder workshops and data analysis
I partnered with my Product Manager and facilitated a series of workshops with Heads of Product and Directors across Sky's major product areas to identify shared goals and agree on prioritisation.
Key themes identified
Fragmented Manage experiences
The digital ecosystem for Package Management within the My Sky app was fragmented, with siloed and inconsistent experiences across services (TV, Broadband, Mobile, and Protect).
Lack of digital self serve
Digital NPS scores showed major pain points around customers trying to complete tasks such as downgrading and cancelling Sky which are not available in digital channels and require phoning up.
Weak app adoption
Call centre analysis showed high volumes of calls related to tasks that could be completed via the app, indicating a need for stronger app adoption.
Proposed solutions
My Sky app design system and patterns
To solve the fragmented experiences, I advocated for the app to be built with a systems-first approach and incorporate UX patterns for key package management tasks. I created a concept library of variables, components, interaction patterns and standardised journeys to be used across each product holding for key tasks.
I organised manage key tasks intro three themes: Understand, Change and Troubleshoot.
Standardised journeys
UX patterns standardise journeys and functions that will be available in multiple places throughout the app.
Templates
Support standardised journeys.
Components
Composable modules balance consistency and flexibility.
Widget-Based Manage Hub
The initial concept focused on bringing key information and actions closer to customers through a widget-driven experience.
The objective was to reduce reliance on long, multi-step journeys and surface valuable information earlier.
Tasks from the widget menu were organised in a cohesive structure linked back to the original themes of understand, change, troubleshoot.
Existing
Siloed product hubs. Different IA structures and journeys across products.
Proposed
Unified Manage Hub. Key information and actions surfaced upfront through widgets.
Pivot
Executive challenge and pivot
The proposed solution was presented to an Executive Steering Group. While feedback was positive, leadership challenged the grouping of tasks by product, wanting us to lean harder into an intent-led experience.
This created a significant challenge because engineering sizing was complete and development was approaching.
I had approximately one week to rethink the approach.
Pivot to intend-led task IA
Alongside delivery planning, I reframed the information architecture around customer intent and worked with the Design Director to validate the direction.
We moved from a structure of:
Product → Relevant information → Action
To:
Customer intent → Relevant information → Action
Additional optimisations
The new North Star expanded on the intent-led model through:
• Embedded actions
• Micro-interactions
• Motion design
• Proactive recommendations
The work was well received at the next Exec steering group and described as “world class design”, later included in an inspiration deck put together by our Director to demonstrate the aspirational direction of design for the team.
Pivot
Validating new IA with find-ability tests
Given the scale of the IA change, validating discoverability of existing key journeys was critical.
I designed a testing framework focused on find-ability to all pages with over 5% visits on the app, asking users to complete a key task from each page, starting from the homepage.
6 x UserTesting.com interaction tests
30 participants each.
12 management tasks for TV & Broadband customers
6 management tasks for Mobile customers
Three versions of the app:
Current
First release (MVP)
North Star
Results - TV & Broadband customers
Results - Mobile customers
Outcome
First release of new My Sky app
Despite a last minute pivot, the new design is on track to meet the original release date with no compromise to systems foundations.
Next steps
Scaling beyond the Manage Hub
As more product teams began contributing to Manage, I identified a risk of teams independently recreating management patterns.
I established a cross-product Manage Design Framework containing:
The Manage vision
Best-practice principles for Controls, Package and Bills
Standardised journeys
Reusable patterns
Links to current product work
I then ran showcases with the TV, Broadband, Mobile and other design teams to establish a shared reference point for future work.
Design principles for manage
Service first. Sales second
Focus first on helping customers achieve their goals quickly and confidently.
Reduce journeys into actions
Where possible, replace traditional multi-step journeys with contextual, interactive experiences.
Prioritise relevance
Design experiences around the customer's products, circumstances and lifecycle moments.
Conclusion
What I learnt and what I’d do differently
Solve pain points, but don’t forget to push the boundaries
Initially I had focused on trying to solve all the known pain points for our customers and architecture. The pivot from leadership pushed to explore how we go beyond solving problems and establish Sky Digital CX as a world class design team.
Make time for validation
I had to make a trade-off between setting up the design system and running Manage Hub validation testing. Testing results would have made a stronger case against a last minute stakeholder pivot. While I still maintain the design system setup was more imperative, if I was faced with this challenge again I would run a quick test that didn’t require observational analysis such as an interaction test through usertesting.com.
Design for the ecosystem, not just the screen
The project reinforced that successful cross-product design requires more than a strong experience. It requires shared principles, patterns and ways of working that allow multiple teams to contribute without fragmenting the experience.