Olympics EXPERIENCE
Stan Sport
The Project
As part of a 4-person design team, I helped define and deliver the Stan Olympics & Paralympics experience. We created a blue-sky, 10-year vision, and took it to a shipped MVP on CTV, Web and Mobile platforms in under a year.
Impact
Stan exceeded its subscriber growth stretch target by 15%, set a new record for daily minutes streamed (up 24% on the previous high), and delivered 7.6 million live watch hours alongside 5.2 million VOD viewing hours. The Olympics homepage also attracted 8.2 million visits.
My Role
Mid-Senior UX Designer
Background
Stan to launch its first-ever olympic games
In February 2023, Stan’s parent company Nine secured the Australian media rights to the Olympic & Paralympic Games until 2032. With the Paris opening ceremony looming in July 2024 - Stan had a short runway to design and deliver a best-in-class Olympic streaming experience on a platform that had never supported an event of this scale.
13 Months out, to fast tracking learnings, Stan engaged Deltatre - where I was working at the time.
Key Objectives
1. HAVE AN OVERARCHING VISION FOR THE OLYMPICS TO INFORM THE 2024 ROADMAP & BEYOND.
2. A PREMIUM OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE THAT IS WORTH PAYING FOR BECAUSE IT IS UNIQUELY BETTER THAN ANY OTHER PROVIDER, PAST OR PRESENT.
3. Identify high-impact features that elevate the sports offering for Olympics and beyond.
4. RETAIN THE OLYMPIC AUDIENCE Post games.
Discovery
Olympic Scale, IA and time-shift viewing pushed Stan Sport into new territory
While my colleague audited Stan’s IA and current state, I focussed on the Games themselves. I explored all Olympic disciplines, understood key tentpole events, athletes and Stan’s content offering, collected insights on a board my colleague jokingly called ‘unhinged’ pre-tidy up.
I mapped the timezone impact on the fan journeys, conducted deep-dive research into all sports, identified highest traffic days for the Australian Audience (Athletics, Rugby Sevens, Swimming, Canoe Slalom) and benchmarked global broadcast experiences to identify opportunities for Stan.
Key Insights
With the time Difference stan is uniquely positioned to support a vod-first olympics
With an 8 hour time difference to Paris, the peak of the action is 3am. While the world watches the 100m Final and Swimming Golds - Australia will be asleep. Only few tentpole events are at reasonable hours (Before 1am and after 6am). Allow users to take control and catch up how they like, with full replays, highlights and short form content front and centre.
PROCESS
Discovery: Product Audit, Olympic Games IA Mapping, Comp Analysis, Experience Statement
Defining IA & Journeys: Personas, Key Journeys/Time of Day, Foundation IA
Concepting: Home Screen States, Content Discovery/Curation pathways, Draft Vision of all pages
Vision Pitch: UI & High Fidelity Mocks, Scenarios & Entry Points, Deck for C-Suit Audience
Execution Strategy: Feature Prioritisation, Retention Strategy
Led by me
supported
To Keep up Offer A Low Barrier to playback
Jumping straight into content or streams is expected in the Olympics, and in a world of TikTok, scrolling and vertical video. Help users with decision fatigue and get them into Olympics content without friction.
To Stand out Avoid being overly nationalisTic - show olympic greatness
Olympics is a global spectacle. Focusing too much on Australian Athletes at the expense of Olympic greatness was underwhelming.
Personas
The 4 Olympic Users
Synthesised from Deltatre’s experience in sports and entertainment design, past Olympic projects, and insights into Stan’s audience and what Paris 2024 will mean for Australians. These personas and their needs underpinned every design decision we made during concepting.
Main Eventers
“I’ll watch if it’s something big”
Casual fan who enjoys events that impact culture. Watches to feel included.
Banterers
“I like to stay informed & keep up with the gossip”
Trending moments & highlights. Likes to stay informed and feel knowledgeable.
Sports Fans*
"Watching sport is part of my weekly TV routine”
Generally interested in sports. Follows a few sports closely. Feels inspired by watching the best of the best.
obsessive*
"I’m heavily interested in the sports I care about”
A strong interest & personal connection to the sport they follow. Will watch as many matches as possible and deep dive into specifics.
*We prioritised designing for Sports Fans & Obsessives
As they’re most likely to pay for Olympics coverage and have historically had their deeper sports needs underserved. Banterers and Main Eventers were also important audience drivers - often existing Stan or Sport subscribers with a lighter interest in the Olympics.
a RICH & Effortless OlyMpic Experience For AlL
The Experience Statement
Premium
Reliable
Personalised
Varied content types
Beyond the event
Innovative
Anywhere
Anytime
Dynamic
The right content at the right time
Convenient
Passion
Excitement
A global event
Celebration
Spectacle
Moments that matter
Inclusive
Accessible
Empowering
For everyone - for all nationalities
The IA
An Olympic IA Designed Around Persona Needs & Behaviours
We imagined a dedicated Olympic Hub structured around five core behaviours: Watch Now, Home, Catch Up, Schedule, and All Sports - each purpose-built to serve users needs.
This navigation system is designed to support all Olympic finding, discovery, and viewing tasks, as well as content discovery patterns and editorial voice throughout the Olympic Games..
THE CONCEPTS
I led the UX concepting of Schedule and All Sports, and contributed to shaping the Olympic Home and Catch Up experiences across CTV (10ft) and mobile. At the end of 8 weeks - we created the following high-level scenarios for different personas and times of day. I presented the Olympics breakdown & mapping to Stan’s C-Suite, before my Design Lead presented the scenarios and concepts.
So… what happened next?
After Deltatre closed its Sydney office, I joined Stan to help turn the product vision into a shipped MVP.
Days before the start of Phase Two - Deltatre closed the Sydney office. I was approached by and joined Stan full-time as a Product Designer to help get the project off the ground. With just eight months before the immovable opening ceremony and no development work begun - I was tasked with designing and shipping an MVP Olympic experience while the core team was still being formed. Two of my Deltatre colleagues joined a few months later.
Dive into some of the projects to see more about the projects, and the challenges and hurdles we faced.
Initiatives & Contributions
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1. Collaborated on Olympics Roadmap Workshop
Alongside the Head of UX & Product Design, I supported the facilitation and synthesis of a cross-functional Olympics Roadmap Workshop to define the Paris 2024 MVP experience.
Helped guide 15+ stakeholders through the effort mapping of 40+ features, ensuring high-level vision was grounded in technical reality by capturing platform dependencies and resourcing needs. -
2. Led Upgrade Journeys UX
Uplifting the upsell flow for current subscribers to purchase Stan Sport & Olympic, so that it was intuitive, high-converting, and scalable across Web, Apple TV, Stan TV, and Fetch.
Improved conversion by 112% and 31% of new subs came through the newly created pathway for consumption only devices. -
3. Led Olympic Schedule UX
Led the UX for the Paris 2024 Olympic Schedule, navigating technical constraints across 11 device platforms to define a schedule MVP - mostly re-using features already designed.
Validated through qualitative usability testing pre-lauch, resulted in 1.6 million visits during the Games period across the different platforms. -
4. Co-led Olympic Content Strategy
I co-led the content strategy for the Olympic Games: Homepage, Schedule, Replays and Discipline pages, architecting a Dayparting Framework that prioritised content on each page, based on the time of day, page purpose and target persona needs.
This strategic layout made it easy for subscribers to scan the pages and quickly find the content they wanted to watch, on the page they expected it, whilst optimising operational workflows. -
5. Collaborated on: Automatic Tile Generation
Previously, Ops teams manually created 7+ tiles per match. Alongside a Sr UI Designer, I designed modular tile templates that supporte differents sports across the full match lifecycle, while improving visual hierarchy and consistency to better surface high-value content.
This removed the need to manually create 1,800+ tiles for Wimbledon and 2,800+ for the Olympics, and is still used by the Stan Sport team today.
Stan’s PARIS 2o24: Olympic EXPERIENCE
collaboration
Olympics Home (PM)
“Show me what to watch” A timely & personalised mix.
With real-time personalisation off the table due to technical constraints, the Olympics homepage needed a way to feel timely, live, relevant, and curated without individual-user tracking or automation. We repurposed existing content merchandising row-types.
I designed and defined three distinct editorial states based on the natural rhythm of the Games and persona needs. This manual "dayparting" strategy minimised decision fatigue and prioritised speed-to-playback.
Morning (AM): Focused on catching up on the overnight action with Highlights, Top 10s and Stan Picks.
Afternoon: Both catch-up and planning for the evening ahead.
Evening (PM): High-intensity ‘Live Now"‘focus, prioritising channels and medal events to capture the zeitgeist of the Olympics.
8.2 million visits during the Games
The primary way users navigated Stan's Olympics content
5+ million engagements from Live & Upcoming
Replays
“I want to see what I missed.” — The Library/Archive
Replays was designed around a clear user mindset: quickly catching up on missed Olympic moments. Originally conceived as Catch-up, the experience was renamed Replays to align with brand guidelines while preserving the underlying intent.
To recreate the Olympic archive concept, I created the day-selector header, displaying competition days in descending order and reusing existing content merchandising with a focused interaction state. Post-Games, this functioned as a complete archive of the Paris Olympics. Similarly to home, we led the content strategy of this page
1.8 million visits
contributed to 5.2 million VOD hours views during the games.
TV Schedule
A full EPG was explored but scoped as ‘XXXL’ T-Shirt size on native TV platforms, requiring a lighter-weight solution within technical constraints. The brief was - what could we build with 0 additional dev effort.
I explored alternative patterns and tested content rails versus a grid-based schedule. In rapid moderated TV testing with 10 users, preference was unanimous: the grid enabled faster planning by enabling users to see all events on at the same time.
Despite its density, users found the grid exciting and reassuring it conveyed the scale of the Olympics and reinforced that Stan offered comprehensive coverage.
1.6 Million Visits during the Olympics
Led by me
Mobile/web Schedule
I advocated strongly for including the Olympic Schedule with deep linking to live matches in the MVP after seeing competitors miss the mark here.
I worked with a UI Designer to give the standard widget Stan branding, adding flags and small ux tweaks like text alignment and filter placement. Most importantly, I worked with product & tech to ensure every event, and replay is linked directly to our schedule - meaning the user can jump straight to playback - wherever they’re browsing.
Australia’s feedback
The Olympics was a success! Stan’s experience ‘met-or exceeded expectations’ (according to our moderated longituinal study) and broke Stan's viewing records by 24% - and increased subscribers by 50% (but it IS the Olympics). Stan & Nine won ‘Best Sports Coverage’ at the Australian TV Logies for their joint coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Hear feedback from our longitudinal study during the Olympics & read online feedback.
Delivering a global event like this was a privilege and a career highlight. I absolutely loved the pace, the high-pressure decisions, and the incredible teamwork that went into it. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of seeing a project of this size go live to millions of people, and I’m so grateful to have been a part of it.