Many screens, one experience: The Berlin Philharmonic

The Berlin Philharmonic is ranked one of the top orchestras in the world. Their Digital Concert Hall is a pioneer of its kind, streaming premium, original content to subscribers—on practically any device—since 2008. Under my former company Ox, I worked closely with the team to solve the difficult problem of user experience consistency across a constantly changing tech environment, maintainability and team inclusion.

As a streaming service with original, high-quality content and a passionate following around the world, it's no wonder the Digital Concert Hall has been a hit from day one. But the device landscape has shifted several times since 2008, and as the number of clients multiplied, problems began to surface. Without a centralized design team, the interface was recreated for each new client, with different user flows, creating a dissonant experience for users—and a difficult task for the BPH team.

Meet the diverse and constantly evolving requirements of each platform, while maintaining a consistent feel and recognizable brand

Simplify and unify app components and user flows, leaving room to leverage each platform's strengths

Work swiftly within a small, startup-like structure and help create better product design processes

Understand our users, their realities, desires and needs and deliver an experience that feels as premium as the content

Prioritize accessibility and inclusion

For the launch of the tvOS app store, we got to rebuild the app from the ground up. We worked closely with our Smart TV team as well as Apple and delivered an experience that delighted users, as well as stakeholders, collecting an "App of the Year (Japan)" award.

With full client approval, we moved on to the next question: how to port this successful experience to all other platforms? The answer was a platform-agnostic design system. This not only facilitated the design of new clients, but also streamlined communication with developers.

Fully redesigned web client based on implemented system

Focus on user-centered design and accessibility

Through metrics, realized we needed to simplify and optimize the subscription model

Implemented more actionable metrics

Creating the foundation for a more data-driven roadmap

With Ox as the center of product design, it became clear that an in-house team would be beneficial. We advised and supervised the building of a development and design team, which is flourishing and growing every month.

Ox also helped implement a design culture by improving processes and educating employees. With the design system, anyone in the company can provide better feedback, for which we implemented a pipeline that leads to continuous optimization through iteration.