Project 01 / 2026 . UX Strategy x Product Design
How do you compete in streaming without subscriptions or originals?
An ongoing UX strategy exploration for Fandango at Home — a transactional movie store evolving to become an ad-supported streaming platform, without subscriptions, without originals, and without losing the collectors it already has.
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
Riders weren't failing because features were missing. They were failing because the app spoke the system's language, not theirs.
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 ecosystem. 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 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
ecosystem.
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
Four explorations that led to three metrics to form our scope
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.
Literature Study + Competitive Analysis
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.
FILM TIMELINE
WHAT USERS WANT
ADS · 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.
WHAT THE BUSINESS NEEDS
ADS · 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
We're not asking users to accept ads where they don't want them. We're asking them to trust the timing. A pre-film "your ad breaks are at minutes X, Y, Z" indication, a 5-second countdown at the bottom of the screen right before an ad comes, to not startle the viewer and ruin emotional investment.
Predictability is the compromise.
0% → 100%
There's also the big pivot
THE PROJECT PIVOTED
FROM
Designing an
ad-supported
streaming app.
TO
Designing an
interconnected
entertainment ecosystem.
We brainstormed ideas and made affinity maps to pivot and form our new scope
THIS IS An Ongoing CASE STUDY.
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.