DramaFever was a streaming service offering a large library of ad-supported content that viewers could watch without creating an account. Although the service had high daily streaming activity and a steady flow of new content, registration, email verification, and paid subscription upgrades remained below business expectations.

I collaborated with two other designers to rethink onboarding across platforms, then led the redesign for the Roku platform, adapting our shared onboarding flows to a television experience where entering information and navigating with a remote were cumbersome.

This case study focuses on how I used Roku’s native capabilities to simplify registration and subscription, while giving viewers clearer reasons to create a DramaFever account or upgrade to premium.

The challenge

A product audit identified several problems with the existing onboarding experience. Registration flows delayed viewers who wanted to start watching, while inconsistent interfaces, branding, and language made the experience feel different across platforms. The reasons to register, verify an email address, or become a paid subscriber were also unclear.

The redesign needed to address both sides of that problem: reduce the effort required to take those steps and give viewers a clearer reason to do so.

A shared foundation

As a team, we examined onboarding patterns in other streaming services and digital products to identify useful approaches and avoid recurring interaction problems.

We then mapped registration, sign-in, and upgrade flows for anonymous viewers, registered users, and premium subscribers. Email verification added another consideration: the experience needed to account for whether a user had already verified their address and where a reminder would be appropriate.

These flows helped us define a shared interaction model, supported by consistent design and language for account benefits and subscription plans. We refined that foundation through stakeholder feedback before dividing responsibility for the platform-specific designs.

Designing for Roku

For the Roku platform, I needed to translate those shared flows into interactions that worked comfortably with a remote control.

I identified several native capabilities that could reduce the effort involved: requesting the email address associated with a viewer’s Roku account, using Roku’s embedded payment interface, and assigning contextual actions to the remote’s asterisk button.

Before incorporating them into the design, I spoke with the development team to assess feasibility and implementation effort. Those discussions confirmed that we could prefill email fields with the viewer’s permission, support subscription purchases through Roku’s native checkout, and use the asterisk button for actions that changed with context, all with relatively little development effort.

That gave me a practical basis for adapting the onboarding flows around capabilities already available on the device.

Reducing user input

The redesigned registration flow offered a one-click option using the email address associated with the viewer’s Roku account, with their permission. This reduced the need to type an address using the remote.

For subscriptions and upgrades, the flow moved into Roku’s native payment interface so viewers could use their existing payment information.

Making the benefits clear

DramaFever’s extensive free library made it easy to start watching, but the onboarding experience gave viewers little reason to take the next step.

For anonymous and registered viewers, I made ad-free viewing explicit in the upgrade call to action. Premium subscribers would no longer see that prompt.

Watchlist functionality provided another reason to register and verify an email address. I assigned the remote’s asterisk button to add or remove highlighted content from the watchlist, giving viewers a contextual shortcut to that feature.

The design connected account actions to concrete benefits: keeping track of shows and watching without ads.

The resulting experience

Internal and external user testing validated the redesigned interactions. The final design brought fewer input steps, clearer account benefits, and remote-friendly controls into a consistent Roku onboarding experience.

Note: DramaFever ceased operations before the core improvements reached production, so the business impact could not be measured.