Disney StreamEngine
"StreamEngine" is a suite of ~35 purpose-built tools that operate Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and STAR+. Our team of designers partnered with hundreds of developers & product managers across Disney to build SAAS products that could each be a startup in their own right.
| Role & Responsibility | Team | Timeline | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sr. Director, Product Design Team hiring, management, and organization design. Design strategy. Partner management. Budgeting. Culture development. | 12 FT Designers + 4-6 Design Contractors | Jan 2019 - Aug 2023 | saved $100M p/a in operating costs supported a 2x growth in AARPU |
Legacy Of Tool Innovation
Why build custom software tools? To create something truly novel you need novel tools.
Disney has a rich history of building new tools that unlock creative possibilities. One famous example was the Multi-plane camera which massively accelerated animation and enabled parallax motion techniques.
Streaming Video is Hard
Building a global streaming platform that delivers flawless video to paying customers in the language & currency of their choice requires a lot of custom software. Operating at the scale, and legal exposure, that Disney does often requires us to build, not buy, solutions.
Here are some of the tools we designed:
Anti-Piracy Operations, Audience Segmentation, CDN Management Console, Commerce & Offer Operations, Commerce Config Tool, Content Catalog Browser, Content delivery Preview, Content Experience Management, Content Portal (hulu live, sVOD), CX Dashboard , Data Activation Framework , DATA instrumentation library, Data Portal , Developer Portal, Dictionary & Translation, Disney Edge Controller (DEC), EXD Design System, Experimentation , Fraud Management Service, Hulu Ad Manager, Hulu Ad Mission Control, Hulu Ad Revenue Processing Service, Machine Learning Dashboard, Metadata Mapping & Visualization, Partner Portal, Player Config Service, Responder Files (DATA Feature Market), SRE Dashboard Streaming QoE Insights, Support Agent Console , Unified Messaging Platform
The Team
A team is greater than the sum of the individuals. It's a singular unit with a shared purpose. The secret ingredient that binds a group of people together is the culture. I'm proud to say the Enterprise XD team at Disney had a strong culture of psychological safety, authenticity, and shared growth.
Culture can be designed with intentional reinforcement of the behaviors that align with our values. Other teams at Disney saw this and asked for an open-source toolkit for our culture workshop.
Pods
To tackle such a large surface area, we organized the team into pods for each topical area. These subjects aligned with business outcomes as well.
Design System
We partnered with an team of engineers who cared deeply about developer productivity to create a design system and a visual language that was unique to disney. This design system provides a high quality, rapid, and robust UI framework across all these products.
