Samsung Home Hub
The Samsung Home Hub is the primary content destination on Samsung’s latest Smart TVs. Designed as a centralized interface, it gives users quick access to their favorite apps, streaming platforms, and personalized recommendations.
Objective
Each year, the North America and Korea teams align on key feature updates for Samsung’s Home Hub, with a major release timed for the new model year. For the 2024 launch, the focus was clear: improve content discovery and drive stronger personalization.
I helped lead the design team through vision-setting, strategy definition, user and business alignment, and feature prioritization as we collaborated closely with cross-functional partners throughout.
Results
• +286% CTR for content (5.8M users)
• +87% Home Hub engagement (13M users)
Responsibilities
• Defined design vision from end-to-end
• Led design execution, developing UX frameworks, high-fidelity designs and prototypes
• Developed a scalable design system
• Collaborated cross-functionally to define business and strategic vision
Jump to the work
Credits: Bora Shin, Raj Akula, Avner Ronen, Pailin Engel, David Gaffin, Steve Kim, Daniel TJ Rim, Nam Yoonjung, Kim Eunlee, Son Jeongmin
Framing the Problem & Defining Success
What problem were we solving?
Users struggled to discover relevant content and were frustrated by having to jump between apps. There was a lack of personalization, and content felt siloed.
Who are the users?
Everyday TV users looking for a fast, seamless way to access and discover content—regardless of app or provider.
Why it mattered
Low engagement on the Media Home experience was directly impacting revenue from advertising and content partnerships. We saw a clear opportunity to improve content discovery and user satisfaction.
Goals
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Increase engagement and time spent on Media Home
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Improve personalized discovery
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Grow deep links to sponsored content
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Create a scalable foundation for future enhancements (AI, personalization, etc.)
How we measured it
Usage analytics post-launch (time on hub, content clickthrough), partner visibility metrics, and alignment with qualitative research from baseline and trend studies.
Our Approach & Key Decisions
Strategy & Workflow
As the design lead, I drove UX and visual direction while aligning with stakeholders across North America and HQ in Seoul. Our approach remained consistent:
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Data and research first
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Define problems and prioritize features
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Iterate on design and validate with testing
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Align cross-functionally before handoff
Key insight that shaped the solution
Users didn’t care where the content lived—they just wanted to access it quickly, without friction. This shifted our thinking from app-based structure to experience-first design.
Trade-offs
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Short-term feasibility vs. future AI-driven capabilities
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Partner visibility vs. user relevance
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Global consistency vs. regional customization
Designs & Iterations
Solution Highlights
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Unified, app-agnostic content browsing experience
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Improved surfacing of relevant, timely content
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Personalized modules to support quick access without deep searching
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Flexible framework designed to scale with AI and partner integrations
Impact & Reflection
Outcome
We launched the 2024 model year TVs, the new Media Home experience addressed user and business goals head-on. Early signals showed increased engagement and stronger alignment with partner KPIs.
What’s next
Future enhancements—including AI-driven personalization and dynamic content modules—are in motion for 2025.
Reflection
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Tight cross-regional alignment and early data-led planning were key to getting this right. Building for the future while delivering immediate value was the balance we had to strike—and one that paid off.
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In hindsight, our assumptions about our users app jumping because of the lack of content exposure were proven right with the increase in engagement of our content. Although app jumping did not drop significantly, it did move the needle for us for future iterations.