BBC iPlayer Download Manager

In 2015 I worked as Senior User Experience Designer on the BBC iPlayer Downloads app for Mac and PC, a lightweight companion for offline viewing.

I led UX, UI and interaction design, prototyping and bi-weekly usability testing across downloading, organisation, playback and expiry states.

The rebuild addressed the friction of downloading episodes one at a time and the trust problems created by earlier changes to the product. It introduced Series Record, episode grouping, watched progress and clearer offline playback states.

The core problem was reliability and control. Streaming could be disrupted by poor connectivity, while offline viewing required viewers to download episodes individually.

The rebuild therefore had to make downloads dependable, introduce Series Record without hiding its consequences, and help viewers understand grouped episodes, watched state, expiry and removal.

The product also needed to rebuild trust after earlier audience criticism and complaints about lost downloads. That made transparency around migration, availability and automatic downloading part of the experience rather than an implementation detail.

After an earlier release had been criticised for limited consultation, the team used in-app surveys, existing research and task-based usability testing to guide the rebuild.

Testing ran iteratively during development, with newly accepted functionality reviewed in internally managed sessions. Findings exposed confusion around the Series Download label, episode hierarchy and the status of content inside My Downloads.

I shaped the experience from first download through grouping, Series Record, playback, expiry and removal. I worked with product, research, creative, engineering and development colleagues, and collaborated with the Principal Engineer to keep the desktop utility lightweight while supporting high-quality offline playback.

The information architecture organised programmes and series so users could move between My Downloads, an individual series and playback without losing their place.

The team shipped the BBC iPlayer Downloads app for Mac and PC with Series Record, episode grouping and watched-progress states.

A BBC audience survey reported that 91% of respondents wanted Series Record, and the feature was included in the release. This is a reported audience-demand figure, not an independently audited performance result, because the available record does not include the survey sample size or full methodology.

The app allowed viewers to subscribe to a series, download new episodes automatically, organise them in My Downloads and resume playback from where they had stopped.

The release also made expiry, availability and watched status more visible, giving viewers greater control over offline content.

The work showed that automation needs visible status and a clear escape route. Series Record is only trustworthy when people can see whether it is active, what will happen next and how to stop it.

The project also reinforced the importance of designing for the full content lifecycle. Downloading, watching, resuming, expiring and removing content needed to feel like one connected system rather than a collection of edge cases.

Forward-looking work remained, including sorting by expiry and exploring Series Record for mobile and tablet apps. Those were future directions rather than shipped outcomes.

A short video prototype captured the target playback experience: smooth, uninterrupted, high-quality viewing without disruptive buffering.

A separate interactive prototype was used in usability sessions to test navigation, download flows, series hierarchy and Series Record messaging.

The tested journey covered finding a programme, downloading an episode, grouping episodes into a series, watching and resuming playback, viewing watched states and cancelling Series Record.

Testing found that people did not want expired episodes to remain indefinitely, but they did want a short period of visibility before automatic removal.

This shaped expiry as an explicit and understandable state rather than silently deleting content. The interface also kept episode grouping, watched progress and availability visible so users could manage offline content without relying on memory.

The available record supports clarity of status and content management. It does not include a formal accessibility audit or measured accessibility outcome.

The Series Record flow allowed users to search for a series and choose between downloading only the selected episode or enabling automatic downloads for future episodes.

During user testing, participants found Series Record intuitive and valued the clear organisation of downloaded episodes and the visual cues showing which episodes had already been watched.

The tested flow covered a new series being created, its first episode downloading and completing, playback, the watched state, cancellation and the empty state before new episodes arrived.

The release was delivered for Mac and PC. Series Record for mobile and tablet remained a future area to explore.

Some information and details are omitted because of confidentiality constraints.

This case study is presented under Fair Dealing guidelines, contains no confidential or proprietary BBC information, and represents my work rather than necessarily the views or strategies of the BBC.

Handling of information follows the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Fair dealing is claimed under Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.