Enhancing Search for Seamless Discovery for 350M+ SonyLIV Users
Search is the gateway to discovering Originals, Live Sports, Movies, and TV Shows for 350M+ users. The legacy search experience created friction finding relevant results.
Team Composition
TL;DR
Problem
Legacy search made it hard to surface relevant results, refine queries, and navigate content at scale.
What I did
Redesigned the experience using failure patterns, user complaints, and global benchmarking, then validated changes through prototypes and quick feedback loops.
Impact
Faster, clearer, more intelligent search that scales across Android, iOS, tablets, and low-end devices.
Challenge
Context
SonyLIV serves 350M+ users, and search is the gateway to discovering Originals, Live Sports, Movies, and TV Shows. The legacy experience created friction: people struggled to find relevant results, refine queries, and navigate a massive library.
Approach
I grounded the redesign in failure patterns pulled from analytics, real user complaints, and benchmarking against global streaming search experiences, then validated each change through prototypes and quick feedback loops rather than a single big-bang release.
Strategy
Decision 1: Design for scale across device tiers
ShippedWhy: A search experience that only works well on flagship phones excludes a large share of SonyLIV's actual user base on low-end Android devices and tablets.
- Layouts and interactions validated across Android, iOS, tablets, and low-end devices
Result: Consistent search experience regardless of device tier.
Process & Visuals
Results
Reflection
At 350M+ users, the long tail of devices matters as much as the flagship experience, and a search redesign that only works well on the newest phones quietly excludes a meaningful share of the people who actually rely on it.