Comcast Xfinity: Celestial App

Comcast Xfinity had several disparate systems used by agents to manage customer data and sales tools across their lines of business. These tools are merging into one new app called Celestial.

Merging multiple apps into one is no small feat; in addition to all the functionality and data to bring over, Celestial is also part of Comcast's commitment to hiring a more diverse workforce. This means the new app will be held to a higher standard of accessibility criteria than any other in the Xfinity ecosystem.

Our Celestial product team was made up of five pods, each with product owners, business analysts, project managers, design leads, and designers. Overseeing the whole project we had a few leaders from product, a creative director, and a design lead.

Each pod was working on a different subset of the application. Making use of the newly defined Xfinity Design System (XDS), our five pods collaborated closely together to align on patterns, create reusable components, and work on our own distinct features to replace the older generation of apps.

I started working on Celestial-related work in February 2022 as a UI designer, moving around pods as needed. I ended my tenure on the project in February 2024.

UI/UX Design, App Design, Design Systems, WCAG Compliance

Prior to Celestial officially starting, I was apart of a pod called ACSR Gaps. Our goal was to phase out a system used by Comcast agents called ACSR, which was the precursor to Einstein360. While many of ACSR's features made it into Einstein360, not all did; most of these features were related to billing processes or user management.

Since ACSR was on a tight timeline to be phased out, we couldn't wait until the Celestial infrastructure was built. Instead, we began designing with XDS and plugged the designs into the current Einstein360 interface, hence the disjointed styles you will see below.

It was challenging to meld the two very different design systems; however, we did make significant improvements to the UX and general information architecture of the features we brought over.

Despite our efforts, it was well-known among our teams that much of ACSR would be throwaway work once these features were ready to be brought into Celestial; as a result, we didn't do much preliminary research or user testing. However, I found that ACSR Gaps was a great way to test the limits of XDS; I was able to experiment and takes notes for how we'd bridge the gap between a marketing-focused design system and an information-dense product like Celestial.

ACSR Gaps ran from February 2022 to August 2022.

Resolved over 140 "gaps" or missing pieces of functionality by bringing ASCR features into E360

Improved UX of features by grouping tasks, changing field types based on best practices, and reducing the number of screens in order to limit loading times

Created a better hierarchy of information to distinguish low priority tasks from high priority ones

Gathered data about using XDS that would inform our approach for Celestial

Fostered a more inclusive experience by implementing chosen name and pronoun fields into user accounts

After ACSR wrapped up, I moved to the pod responsible for taking the old Retail360 app and translating that to its new space within Celestial. Our pod explored the features most applicable to retail agents: checking customers into the store, managing queues, creating appointments, and handling equipment exchanges. For our work, we primarily focused on tablet screen sizes since that device is what will be most used by our subset of users.

Before undertaking any design work, each pod member visited our nearest Xfinity store to conduct observational research and contextual inquiries. I watched retail agents use the existing app to check customers in and manage equipment exchanges. Talking to them, I identified some of their core frustrations: long loading times, not being able to quickly add customers to the queue, and issues with the app's driver's license scanner. While not all of these would be addressed right away, our pod used the information we collected to keep the user at the forefront of our conversations.

After formalizing the research, our pod's two UX-focused designers made personas, user journeys, and other materials to present back to stakeholders in order to help refine our roadmap and create alignment between business goals and ideal user experiences.

In the meantime, I was tasked with working on the first UI element of the retail space in Celestial: the store space header. This navigational component was designed with the flexibility to extend to other spaces such as customer accounts and inventory management.

We spent most of our time focused on queue management: our UX designers held an OOUX workshop with our key stakeholders before moving into low- and mid-fidelity wireframes. Using these wires, myself and our other UI designer created more mid-fidelity designs to ideate with our stakeholders.

I was on the retail pod from September 2022 until early 2023.

Completed 5 different store visits and gathered data from roughly 40 different retail employees

Designed the first Celestial-specific component: the space header

Held first set of OOUX workshops with retail stakeholders

Set standards of research frequency for other pods

Day-to-day, the biggest challenges I faced as a UI designer on the ACSR and retail pods were the limitations set by the design system, Xfinity Design System (XDS).

Started before Celestial, XDS was initially created to bring unity across customer-facing experiences, mainly the Xfinity.com website, the My Account portal, and the Xfinity app. Early on in my team's work, I identified that since these experiences serve a different purpose, the resulting design system doesn't meet the robust needs of a product like Celestial. As a result, I was only on the retail pod for a short period of time before moving to my next Celestial adventure: the Celestial Design System (CDS).

Think Company Chris Hungate, Senior Design Lead, Celestial Casey Hewens, Design Lead, ACSR Gaps Nicole Kutos, Senior UI Designer, ASCR Gaps + Retail Pods Sara Havekotte,UX Designer, ACSR Gaps + Retail Pods Husna Ansari, UX Designer, ACSR Gaps + Retail Pods Angelica Suarez, Producer, Retail Pod

Comcast Xfinity Lea Refice, Executive Director Philip Sorrentino, Creative Director Austin Grutze, Design Lead, Retail Pod Matthew Bailey, Product Owner, Retail Pod Matt Gastgeb,Senior UI/UX Designer, Retail Pod Nouela Johnston, Experience Designer, XDS