Project 01 / 2026 . UX Strategy x Product Design
How do you compete in streaming without subscriptions or originals?
CLIENT
MY ROLE
UX Strategy · Fandango ticketing integration · Ad experience design
TEAM
4 HCDE Multidisciplinary team
Status
In Progress · 2026
In a hurry? Here's the summary
DESIGN QUESTION
How might we surface the right entertainment signal at the right moment — so a user never needs to leave the Fandango ecosystem to make a decision?
PROBLEM SCALE
Fandango owns ticketing, streaming, and the most trusted review platform in the world. Not one user we spoke to knew that. The flywheel exists as a business model. Not as a user experience.
KEY INSIGHT
Fandango doesn't have a content problem. It has a handoff problem. Every piece of the entertainment decision — discovery, watching, reviewing, buying — already exists inside one company.
01
Context
EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT STARTS ON ROTTEN TOMATOES. IT SHOULD END ON FANDANGO.
We were asked to reimagine Fandango’s new platform called "At Home", transition from a transactional movie platform into an ad-supported streaming platform. The platform lacked a distinct identity, clear engagement strategy, and ecosystem awareness among users.
Our challenge was to define what could make Fandango at Home uniquely valuable under AVOD (Ad-Supported Video on Demand) constraints, while retaining legacy digital collectors and attracting a new generation of streaming-first users.
WHAT IT WAS
A transactional movie store.
Rent. Buy. Collect.
WHAT IT NEEDED TO BECOME
An ad-supported streaming
platform.
Three hard constraints.
CONSTRAINT 03
NO ORIGINALS
The company cannot produce original content. Period.
CONSTRAINT 02
NO SUBSCRIPTIONS
Monetization through subscription was explicitly off the table.
CONSTRAINT 01
Focus on AVOD
Ads are the business model. Not a fallback, the foundation.
02
Methods
Three explorations that scoped our project.
Secondary research. Competitor teardowns of Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Tubi. Six in-depth interviews, a 56-person survey. The scope sharpened as we listened.
Literature Study + Competitive Analysis
Led a comprehensive study on different kinds of streaming models, the competitors and industry practices.
Survey
56 respondents divided across 18 - 52 years of age . Most of them stream, no one knew about FAH.
In-Depth interviews (idi)
STEP 01
STEP 02
STEP 03
7 in-depth interview, 3 moderated by me, 2 repeating themes found.
Click on images to access them, some can't be accessed to protect participant privacy
EVERYONE KNEW FANDANGO.
EVERYONE KNEW ROTTEN TOMATOES.
almost nobody knew FANDANGO AT HOME existed.
Worse: nobody knew the three platforms belonged to the same parent. To users, they were three strangers. To the business, they were one company. The gap between those two facts was the entire opportunity.
03
Findings
USERS WANT ADS last.
THE BUSINESS NEEDS THEM first.
The sharpest contradiction in the project. Users preferred ads concentrated in the final 30% of a film — preserve emotional continuity, then accept the interruption. The business needed ads in the first 70% — retention and monetization both collapse if a user closes the tab before the ads run.
Ads in last 30%
Emotional continuity preserved through the first 70%. Ads accepted in the final stretch — the user has already chosen this film, the investment is intact.
Ads in first 70%
Front-loaded ad delivery. If a user bounces after watching half the film, the inventory has already been served. Retention and revenue both bias toward earlier breaks.
WHERE WE LANDED — FOR NOW
Predictability is the compromise. Users will accept earlier ads if they can see them coming.
There's also the big pivot
We brainstormed ideas and made affinity maps to pivot and form our new scope
WHAT USERS WANT
WHAT BUSINESS NEEDS
00%
25%
50%
75%
100%
What we were doing
Designing an ad-supported streaming platform.
What we needed to do
Designing an interconnected
entertainment ecosystem.
04
Strategy
AUDIENCE
18–34
Streaming-first viewers, not collectors.
SURFACES
TV · LAPTOP
Mobile as a strategic extension, not a primary canvas.
CONTENT FOCUS
FRANCHISES
For MVP — they invite continuation, not single sessions.
Now that we had the why,
we found the who, what and how.
Who will use?
What device?
How to drive engagement?
This formed the bedrock of our future iterations, giving us a common truth to base our ideas around as a team.
Why Franchises?
This creates natural reasons for the users to come back, and they also create natural reasons to cross platforms.
Franchises invite continuation. Sequels, prequels, spin-offs
Three properties. One shared audience.
No other business owns Ticketing, reviews and streaming.
Every streamer has a hook.
Ours had to be the Ecosystem.
Each platform survives because something about its behavior is unmistakable. We started by naming what other people's hooks are, and what ours could be, given the constraints.
Netflix
Prime video
youtube
FAH
reduce friction, maximize retention
support commerce + product discovery
infinite, social, algorithmic
??? — Keep the users inside the ecosystem
Autoplay, "skip intro", endless rows. The product is convenience.
A streaming service inside a store. The product is purchase intent.
Discovery is the product. Watch time is the metric.
No subs. No originals. Ads are core. The hook can't be content, it has to be behavior.
STAGE 01
ENTRY
Every platform is a door into the ecosystem. A Rotten Tomatoes score, a Fandango ticket, a FaH film tile, each is a way in.
→
STAGE 02
ENGAGEMENT
The platform earns attention. Predictable ads, social signal, franchise rails, mood-aware discovery, all in service of staying.
→
STAGE 03
CONVERSION
Watch, buy, save, share, rate. The action doesn't have to be a purchase, it has to leave a trace the ecosystem can use.
→
One Loop. Three stage interaction loop.
infinite re-entries.
STAGE 04
RE-ENTRY
The most valuable moment in the loop. The user returns — primed by what they just did, surfaced where they'll act on it.
If the hook is "keep users inside the ecosystem," the unit of design isn't a screen, it's a stage. Each platform plays a different role in the same loop.
05
Ownership
THIS IS An Ongoing Project.
A lot of updates have been
made since this presentation
was made.
The project is still active. The framework is set; the loops are mapped; the visual language is locked. What comes next is the unglamorous, important work — prototyping, validation testing, refining the timing of every cross-platform trigger. The interesting questions haven't been answered yet. They've finally been asked correctly.
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