Bringing Bite-Sized Discovery to Streaming
Tubi’s Scenes. A mobile discovery tool for everyone.
In a world of endless scroll and shrinking attention spans, Tubi Scenes was built to meet users where they are—on mobile, on the move, and looking for a quick hit of entertainment.
Scenes is a dedicated tab within the Tubi mobile app, offering shortform video moments pulled directly from Tubi’s massive library of over 250,000 titles. Think of it as “TikTok meets streaming discovery.” Whether it’s a nostalgic flashback or an unexpected laugh, users swipe vertically through curated and AI-selected highlights—then jump into the full-length content, save it to their watchlist, or personalize future recommendations with a simple “Like.”
What started as an experimental MVP became one of Tubi’s most engaging mobile-first features.
Design Goals
- Build a swipeable shortform experience that feels native to mobile users
- Drive engagement with longform content via Watchlist adds, playback starts, and content shares
- Introduce a lightweight UI anchored by familiar streaming visual cues (title art, genre tags)
- Combine machine learning and editorial curation to surface standout scenes
Role & Responsibilities
- Principal Product Designer
- Motion design and UI prototyping
- Collaborated closely with product, content ops, data science, and engineering
- Drove visual language and interaction design
Media
Finding the Problem
With a content library this large, discovery becomes its own kind of friction. Tubi had strong homepage algorithms and decent search—if you knew what you wanted. But for users looking to browse, to stumble into something new, or to be surprised, there wasn’t a clear entry point.
We asked:
What about the user who doesn’t want to commit to a 2-hour film—or even a 2-minute trailer—just to see if they’re interested?
Our hypothesis was simple: shortform content could lower the barrier to exploration, reduce decision fatigue, and create a meaningful bridge from mobile browsing to longform viewing.
Key Design Solutions
We crafted a lightweight, dopamine-friendly browsing experience—built around ease, motion, and intent.
- Vertical swipe UI inspired by TikTok and Instagram Reels for immediate familiarity
- Title anchoring with key art and visual overlays to connect each clip to its source
- Built-in Watchlist, Like, and Share actions, with responsive haptics and micro-interactions
- AI + Human clip generation, pulling out iconic, funny, or dramatic moments from movies and series
- Seamless transitions to the full title, with cross-device handoff from mobile to TV
Obstacles & Challenges
Leadership Buy-In
Scenes began as a scrappy side project with no formal roadmap. Stakeholders were focused on other priorities, so our lean team had to build and prove the concept from the ground up.
Content Readiness
Tubi didn’t have a ready-made library of shortform clips. Content ops and designers manually cut dozens of social-ready moments, tested their performance, and iterated quickly to identify what worked.
Balancing Social and Streaming UX
We had to blend the swipe-first, ephemeral feel of social media with the grounded, content-forward nature of a streaming app. That meant developing new UI patterns that felt familiar and distinctly Tubi.
Outcomes
🚀 Tubi’s first-ever visionOS app launched on schedule
🎉 Positive early user feedback praising ease of use and immersive feel
📱 Strengthened relationship with Apple, showcasing Tubi’s readiness to innovate
👥 Created an internal blueprint for future spatial design projects
Reflection
Tubi Scenes is one of those rare projects that starts as a small bet and becomes a foundational product. From idea to execution, it combined everything I love about product design—vision, iteration, collaboration, and most of all, user delight.
We gave people a new way to browse streaming content that felt modern, light, and rewarding. Scenes continues to evolve as a powerful discovery tool—and I’m proud to have helped bring it to life.
Outcomes
📈 +215K daily users engaging with Scenes within the first 6 months
🎬 Significant lift in Watchlist usage, correlating to longform engagement and retention
🔁 Higher return visits on mobile, with Scenes becoming a core habit loop
💼 Evolved from MVP to flagship mobile feature with dedicated design and content support