Disney+ Growth Design

Designing the product, team, and program that grew Disney+ from 0 to 105M subscribers.

1. Basecamp
   1. The Mountain of Scope
   2. Assembling the team
   3. Experience Principles
2. Ascent
   1. Landing Page
   2. TV Signup
3. Summit
   1. Global expansion
   2. Optimizing Revenue
   3. V2 Workshop
4. Descent
   1. Outcomes
   2. Takeaways

Chapter 1: Basecamp

The Mountain of Scope

Features x Devices x Payment Terms x Regions

The global scale of Disney+ Growth required intersecting vectors of features, devices, payment methods, and global regions (currencies, laws, language). Each feature might have 5-9 variants (e.g. Signup on Roku in the US is very different than iOS in Europe).

Assembling The Team

At inception, the "Growth" design team was 3 generalist designers + 1 UX researcher. We did not have the degree of specialization, or scale, that needed to meet Disney's ambitions.

Growth Team - January 2019

Solution

Scaling the team was a design challenge I tackled with my peer Directors and VP of Product. We aimed for a modular structure, that could scale up, while still providing clear swimlanes, accountability, and autonomy.

After considering functional and matrix team structures, we agreed to organize people around KPIs they could pursue that also correlated to the user journey. We called these, "Pods":

We then expanded this model to more teams from Data and Marketing (and eventually Operations) and added names. Each of these teams had the autonomy to self-organize around which tactics and processes they used to deliver against the KPIs.

Example Pod

Each pod had the autonomy to define their ways of working, but generally, they found a 2-week cadence of ceremonies to stay in sync, prioritize work, flatten issues, and break out working groups.

Outcomes

Over the 18 months from inception until Launch, I grew the Growth team to 1 Design Manager, 1 Principal Designer, 5 product designers, 2 researchers, and 1 program manager. We also had specialists from our Motion Studio, Prototyping, Design Systems, and International UX teams embedded in the growth team.

I mentored two new designer leaders into positions leading their teams, with the autonomy to deliver against clear KPIs.

Growth Team in December 2020

Experience Principles (aka Tenets or Axioms)

We established Experience Principles for Disney+ because we've seen them improve the quality of design decisions on complex projects. Writing these with our cross-functional team made these real living ideas that people would say while collaborating.

Chapter 2: Ascent

Landing Page

The biggest challenge for any growth designer is communicating value. Understand what your users truly care about so you can present the right offer at the right time to fortify their buying decisions. The organic landing page is a powerful lever for growth because it is a canvas for communicating value.

What was important to Disney+ subscribers? A variety of content for their whole family.

The homepage evolved from early 2018 until mid-2021 starting as a stimulus for research teams (marketing and UXR) to help us learn more about our guests, and evolving over time into an optimized proven product with shared ownership between Marketing and Product. Some changes to call out:

• The tagline shorted as we learned what features and values resonated with consumers. Eventually, awareness reached a point where we didn't need any tagline.
• The artwork grew more complex over time. We always knew that people needed validation of Disney+'s value proposition by seeing the content they'd get, but operationally we needed to evolve to keep the titles fresh and localized.
• The call to action coalesced around the bundle as we learned about its value to consumers, and to the business.

TV & Connected Devices Signup

Challenge

TV is the biggest platform for engagement, with 70% of views on living room devices. The challenge for Growth Design is that there are dozens of platforms to design for: Roku, Fire TV, Samsung TVs, tvOS, Playstation, XBox; not to mention all the Smart TVs and Cable Boxes. Each device has different remote controls, payment terms, and graphics rendering capabilities.

Reference Design

Our solution is to create a "reference" design and then make adjustments for each major platform.

TVOS

TVOS from Apple has a D-Pad remote similar to Roku, Fire, and Smart TVS. Apple also has unique payment terms that require In-App-Purchases through their app store.

This purchase flow was the most complex of all TV devices due to Apple's reluctance to let Disney require users to create a Disney+ account. We iterated dozens of times to arrive at a design that satisfied Apple's UX standards and supported Disney's business goals. This set a precedent for all other streaming services.

Don't let anyone tell you Apple is always easier to use.

Optimizing Signup On TV

Soon after launch, we could see that login and signups were a usability issue for people with signup completion rates 20% of those on Mobile and Web. HOW MIGHT WE make signup on TV easier?

We learned two things from qualitative research:

1. TV remotes are hard to use
2. We don't do enough to build on TV like we can on the Web by showing more content and features.
3. There are more product offerings on the web purchase flow

Our hypothesis

Direct people off the TV to the mobile web for login and signup by using QR Codes or "License Plates".

Results & Outcomes

We ran usability studies to determine whether QR codes or "license plate" would be usable to our guests. This was before QR codes were normalized in the pandemic. 96% of participants preferred the QR code to the existing solution of entering info manually. 45% of those participants had never used a QR code before but still preferred that UX.

In-market we saw a 33% decrease in conversion rate, which was alarming. Fortunately, that was offset by a 200% increase in our Bundle take-rate. The rise in bundle sales boosted LTV & MRR making this new design a solid win for users and the business.

Chapter 3: Summit

Global expansion

Challenge

A common growth tactic is horizontal expansion into new geographic markets, and as a global company, this was an obvious goal for Disney.

Each region has unique standards for signing a subscription contract, payment methods, and content ratings. The Growth Design team partnered with our international UX team (IUXD) to learn how these regions would impact the signup experience. Here were some notable new requirements:

• The GDPR privacy regulations passed by the EU, and local restrictions in Germany, France, and the UK required users to be presented with the EULA for signature before subscribing to a service.
• Tax laws in some Latin American countries, notably Argentina & Chile, require additional billing information collected.
• Credit cards are far less common than bank debit cards in Europe and Latin America, or digital wallets like PayPal (e.g. Pagomercado in LATAM).

Solution

In Europe, we modified the core signup flow to present users with the license agreement, a step to confirm their purchase, and Direct Debit as the default payment option.

Latin America required additional fields for Tax collection in Argentina and Chile

Outcomes

Each new region that we rolled out provided a basis change in growth for Disney+.

Optimizing Subscribers Or Revenue

Situation

In 2021 as Disney+ subscriber numbers climbed and cable carriage fees dropped, we faced some new questions about our goals. Our Finance teams confirmed that our biggest lever for increasing MRR (or LTV) would be increasing sales of the Disney Bundle with Hulu and ESPN+. The Disney Bundle provided significantly higher user satisfaction and LTV:

Challenge

How might we encourage customers to sign up for the Bundle if we redesign the signup flow?

One hypothesis was to showcase the different plan options better to guests. A "plan picker" pattern was familiar to people signing up for streaming services, and it would provide more space to explain the benefits of the Bundle. This would introduce a new step in the purchase flow for users but we believed the tradeoff was worthwhile.

Solution

A/B flows comparison

Results

The experiment produced good news and bad news.
+0.8% Total CVR
-1.2% MRR

Exact figures redacted for security.

Overall conversion rate increased; supported by much higher conversions on the Disney+ standalone offer. Unfortunately, this came at the expense of Bundle sales that went down, bringing overall revenue down with it.

This test result forced a reckoning within Disney+ Growth teams to decide if we were ready to fully commit to focusing on Revenue Growth over Subscriber Growth. Disney made new profitability commitments to investors. Our focus formally moved from net subscribers to MRR.

V2 Workshop

Situation

The working group was heads down during our launch and misalignment and confusion had started to negatively impact collaboration.

• We lost sight of the larger vision of how might we create an authentically Disney experience.
• Poor communication with teams using the same words to mean different things slowing down every collaboration point.
• Teams were not aligned on customer segment definitions, user needs, or business value.

My direct reports organized a cross-functional summit for everyone working on Growth and Onboarding. This included people from all our cross-functional growth Pods. This group established three goals:

1. Develop a shared vision for Disney+ Onboarding
2. Explore user journeys; Identify problem areas and opportunities
3. Determine priorities as a team

Solution

Workshop Outcome

With the trust and credibility we had earned in the launch phase coupled with the time to focus on these questions, we were able to get team alignment relatively quickly.

We also had a list of 6 viable ideas to prototype and test with users.

Chapter 4: Descent

Outcomes

Disney+ became the fastest-growing streaming service ever.

Takeaways

I don't believe that "Growth Design" was responsible for all this success. Disney+ was a desirable product offered at the right time. However, I believe that we did the work necessary – all the user archetypes, devices, payment methods, partnerships, and design systems - to maximize the opportunity.

"We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work."
–Thomas Edison

In mid-2021 I took on a new opportunity within Disney Streaming to lead design for STAR+ our new general entertainment service in Latin America. I handed off the Growth Design team, roadmaps, and partnerships to my colleague to continue Disney+'s growth over the next 18 months.