It all started when…

Samsung’s Consumer Experience Lab worked with Yves Béhar and Fuse Project to develop an award-winning television that is not just smart but a true masterpiece. A beautiful design that blends with your home, Samsung Frame is designed to complement your space, no matter what your style is. The Frame functions as a normal TV but also displays museum quality artwork or personal photos when you're not watching TV content. The Frame is designed to look like a framed piece of art hung on the wall until turned on, thus replacing the black rectangle on the wall - the regular TV

MY ROLE

Interaction Designer

YEAR

2017 - 2018

The Frame is the ultimate combination of a TV and a picture frame that embodies unique preferences and design lifestyles. The two modes, ‘TV Mode’ and ‘Art Mode’ can each display unique atmosphere. As you turn off the TV mode, the TV will shift into the Art Mode and act as an objet d’art that brings class to your interior design.

In 2017 when frame launched…

it was all about the idea of replacing the TV with a piece of art. A whole new system architecture and user interface had to be created for the Art Mode of Frame as it was a very different experience from the TV mode and UI of existing Samsung smart televisions. The Frame UI was designed to be a minimalistic and fluid interface that showcased artwork and finding art.

The goal of Frame 2.0 or Frame 2018 was to enrich The Frame by refining existing feature sets and defining new features to make it more personal and customizable for users. This meant creating fluid ways to add and display personal photos, creating personal collections and building a recommendation system based on user preferences.

Design Principles

Emphasize Fluidity

Reinforce a clear mental model through the meaningful use of motion. Create a sense of location with thoughtful transitions during navigation.

do more with less

Allow the user to focus on one task at a time with simple interactions and visuals. Create a lightweight experience and delight the user.

be personal

Take advantage of user preferences, saved artwork, and personal content to create a bespoke experience.

Design Iterations

We iterated on the designs and selective designs went from low fidelity wireframes to high fidelity prototypes. In-lab usability testing was conducted with the help of users who represented our user demographics. While usability testing validated some of our design decisions, it also brought out some usability issues that we had overlooked.

One such example was…

When we added the Favorite options, our natural choice was to include it as part of “Options” menu that was available on Frame 2017, on top of each artwork (depicted below). Options included Details and Mat choices, to which we added Favorites. When a user selected “Options” by navigating up, it would reveal the three options. This was guided by our principles related Minimalism and Aesthetics, that was a core component to The Frame. However, we saw that a vast majority of our users failed to favorite artworks because they couldn’t find a way to perform the action.

Users are used to quickly adding items to a Favorites list in social media and e-commerce sites. Having to go through few steps to favorite an item was a red flag. Our decision was to open up “Options” and to always display the menu, that included Favorites, above an artwork. This was an instance where we compromised on a design principle to increase usability.

The online Art Store allows users to explore extraordinary works from internationally recognized artists and to start monthly art store . This involved The Art Store, Samsung Checkout and User Accounts to function together. However, these were all different components designed individually and did not function well together in the Frame. This led to non-user friendly membership or subscription flow to Art Store.

Solutions

Consumer Focussed TV

Create a more consumer focussed TV meant that Frame 2018 would be tailored to enhance in-home and personal experiences. This involved separating and differentiating commercial consumer experience from in-home consumers and focussing on driving art store subscriptions by catering more towards in-home needs.

Fluid Check Out Process

Create a fluid checkout process to make obtaining a membership easier. This involved bringing together different components from the Samsung consumer product experience and tying it together. It also meant creating awareness and promoting membership options to ensure that it is visible.

Design Iterations

We went through different options for membership up-sell cards, that would surface membership options when certain conditions were met. Iterations for user flows for artwork purchase including subscription flow, individual artwork purchase flow, collection purchase flow, free artwork collections, purchased artwork collections etc were inspected to come up with a flow that was not only user friendly but that also promoted subscriptions.

Final Designs

Once the user flows and low fidelity wireframes were finalized, we iterated on the visual designs and focussed on providing an art collection preview on the membership card. Membership card variations were created to various possibilities including membership trial, membership renewal, active membership and signed out users. Adding the login status to the beginning of the user flow made the complicated purchase flow less complicated and provided more visibility of the otherwise hidden Samsung Account Status.

Frame was launched with enhanced features, new customization options and more than 800 available works of art, The Frame 2018 transforms the living room into a dynamic gallery space.

Owners of The Frame 2018 now had more ways than ever to customize the look and feel of their room. The Samsung Art Store, the world’s largest art platform for TVs, houses an ever-growing and diverse library of artwork. Whether they prefer to change the look of their room each season or want to bring a fresh vibe to their décor for a dinner party, consumers can customize The Frame to create their preferred aesthetic in any room. With an improved UI, owners of The Frame can browse different art pieces based on the color scheme of the room, or by a particular medium, like drawings or photography. Then, much like curating a music playlist, owners can create a personalized collection that shuffles through their particular selections as often as they like.