2021 - 2025
My role: Lead Product Designer
Team: Product & Technology Innovation
Company: Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Product type: Website - Mobile app (iOS/Android) - Roku TV app
Skills used: UI/UX design - Product design - Communication design - User research - User testing - Marketing - Stakeholder management
Challenges: Design a safe, trusted, centralized source of high quality Club content, ensuring the product stays intuitive enough for users between the ages of 5 to 18 years old. Other challenges involved navigating strict Roku TV platform design specifications and accessibility standards while balancing stakeholder requirements, feature scope, and engineering feasibility.
The familiar environment
I initially explored a more playful card based browse layout unique to Virtual Club, closer to a game launcher than a streaming app hoping it would feel more youth specific. Testing with Club members ages 5 to 18 showed the opposite, kids under 10 struggled to find content and the older teens found it "babyish", we scrapped it in favor of a YouTube style row layout, which every age group navigated confidently within seconds. Familiarity beat novelty here.
The content viewing experience
The video player was structured to move users naturally from discovery into video consumption, with clear metadata, related content, and contextual recommendations helping them continue exploring. I tested the core viewing flows with users to validate navigation, content hierarchy, and playback interactions, then iterated on the experience based on those findings. Across web, mobile, and TV, the goal was to create a consistent viewing experience while adapting to the strengths and constraints of each platform, ultimately supporting our engineers with easing total workload and allowing new users to jump between web, mobile and TV with little to no trouble navigating.
New Headspace partnership
When Headspace content came on board, the teams first instinct was to fold it directly into the existing content rows alongside STEM and Arts categories, simply creating a new category called "Headspace". I pushed back on this idea because it felt like mental health content sitting next to, directly under or above other content felt dismissive and kids wouldn't seek it out proactively. We separated it into its own dedicated space with a distinct Headspace visual identity so it read as a true resource, not just more content. Post integration we saw a 22% increase in average watch time.
Mobile app experience
I adapted the core content ecosystem into a mobile first experience, focusing on fast discovery and familiar interactions without losing the visual language established across web. Shared components, content rails, and navigation patterns created a consistent foundation. Through prototyping and user testing, I refined the mobile information hierarchy, thumb accessible navigation bar, and content discovery flows around how users naturally browse and decide what to watch. The final experience prioritized clear content hierarchy and dynamic components for every mobile screen size.
Roku TV app experience
I explored multiple TV layouts, including more compact and information dense approaches, then I user tested the key navigation flows in different layouts to determine which structure felt most intuitive. Testing consistently favored the more spacious layouts, giving users clearer visual hierarchy and making content easier to scan and navigate from across a larger room. The shared patterns between platforms relieved our engineers from a lot of unnecessary work.
More than a platform
Virtual Club created a safer, more connected way for young people to discover what Boys & Girls Clubs were creating around the world. The product expanded the reach of club content work and opened the door to a first of its kind Headspace × BGCA collaboration.
If I were to change anything about the product I would've loved to include the capability to run polls in live events within the chat, this feature was discussed and internally tested but severe performance issues kept us from moving forward on that feature. Another feature that would've been interesting would be interactive videos, allowing users to answer educational questions throughout the video, further allowing us to capture data and allowing our youth to participate in healthy thoughtful exercises.
The most exciting part for me, building a product that enriched the lives of young people at a global scale, working with the team at Headspace and carrying a product all the way from launch to an established streaming platform BGCA can be proud of.
