RTÉ Player
Role
UI & UX Product Designer
Platforms
Smart TV (Apple/Android), iOS/Android Mobile, Web
Duration
2 year
RTÉ Player Metrics: The redesign delivered measurable improvements across the experience: +44% development speed through shared components, +31% content discovery (browse-to-play), and a unified Design System scaled across 5 platforms.
CONTEXT & ROLE
Senior UI & UX Product Designer within a large cross-functional team of developers, Product Owners, and Product Managers
Particularly responsible for RTÉ Player Web, with a focus on the Watchlist / Working Space experience
Worked on the Design System build, creating reusable components, typography, spacing, and design tokens
Unified the product experience across web, mobile, and Smart TV
Started with the web platform and scaled the system across platforms, improving consistency and development efficiency
RTÉ Player is Ireland’s national public broadcaster’s streaming platform. As its audience grew, the experience had become fragmented across web, mobile, and Smart TV, with each platform using different design patterns and visual languages. The project focused on bringing these experiences together through a scalable Design System and unified product experience, while adapting the design to each platform’s specific interaction model.
CHALLENGE
✓ Establish a unified design system across all platforms: mobile, web, and Smart TV
✓ Redesign information architecture to reduce time-to-content across devices
✓ Deliver a consistent, accessible brand experience at national scale
✓ Accelerate development speed through reusable component libraries
✓ Optimise each platform's interaction model without fragmenting the experience
Design Process
1. Discovery & Architecture
We began with a cross-platform UX audit of RTÉ Player, focusing on the Web experience and comparing it with mobile and Smart TV. We mapped differences in navigation, content discovery, playback states, and interaction patterns, identifying where the experience felt inconsistent across devices. This helped define the core Web architecture and reusable patterns that would later scale across platforms, while accounting for the different interaction models of mouse, touch, and TV remote/D-pad navigation.
This is stronger than the original because it tells a recruiter what you actually audited, what you found, and how the audit influenced the Design System and cross-platform strategy. It also aligns with RTÉ's documented multi-platform setup.
RTÉ Player - Web
WatchList - Working Space
2. Scalable Design System
I translated the RTÉ brand into a digital-first visual system, using the existing red brand colour against a predominantly black background to create a distinctive and consistent viewing experience. We defined reusable components, typography, spacing, colour tokens, and interaction states that could scale across different screen sizes and interaction models.
The system was designed to work across touch, mouse, and D-pad navigation, allowing the same product language to adapt naturally to mobile, web, and Smart TV rather than creating separate experiences for each device.
3. Design & Engineering Alignment
Components were designed and tested across platforms from the start, with continuous feedback from developers to ensure technical feasibility and scalability. This approach allowed us to identify platform-specific constraints early and deliver a consistent experience while still respecting the interaction patterns of each device.
Reimagining the Watchlist Experience
Watchlist / Working Space Features
As part of the RTÉ Player Web redesign, I focused on the Watchlist / Working Space experience — creating a dedicated space where users could save programmes and easily return to their content.
We mapped the journey from discover → save → manage → return → watch, defining key states such as empty, saved, removed, and unavailable content. This helped establish a clear structure and consistent interaction model across the experience.
Using the Design System we developed, I built the Working Space from reusable patterns and components, including content cards, buttons, navigation, icons, typography, spacing, colour, and interaction states. These components were designed responsively and structured as reusable building blocks, allowing the experience to scale across screen sizes while maintaining consistency.
The result was a scalable and cohesive Watchlist experience that connected content discovery, personalisation, and playback within the wider RTÉ Player ecosystem.
RTÉ Player - Web
Working Space
Results
