With its acquisition of the remaining stake of Hulu completed, the Walt Disney Company is repositioning the streaming service as a global General Entertainment brand on Disney+, replacing Star in international markets beginning 8 October.
According to Disney, “With this change, and in preparation for a fully integrated unified app experience next year, users will begin to see further integrations of Hulu across the Disney+ app as part of an ongoing and iterative slate of product updates on the homepage and beyond. This includes a series of design and navigation enhancements rolling out over the coming weeks and months — offering a more dynamic and intuitive experience.”
These enhancements include:
- A new navigation bar added to the top of the homepage with a “For You” tab. Recommended viewing will be powered by an updated algorithm that learns user preferences over time. There are also tabs for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN, depending on the user’s subscription, making it easier to explore each catalogue individually.
- A Live hub in the main vertical navigation which takes viewers straight into the latest live news, sports, and events, as well as 24/7 Streams.
- New badging tags such as “Season Finale,” “New Series,” and “New Movie” will highlight what’s fresh and timely.
In the area of personalised recommendations, Disney says it has been evolving its personalised video algorithm that will learn and improve over time. This, it says, will power the recommendation and personalisation engine for the content surfaced to users across all touchpoints on the platform, especially in the new “For You” tab.
To ensure users are watching in their own profile, Profiles will be made more prominent across the interface. From there, users will find titles recommended based on their unique viewing habits.
Disney says a more dynamic and visual homepage, that is more modern and intuitive, will enable easier discovery of beloved characters and stories. This includes a new video display in the Hero carousel and a more dynamic brand row showcasing the latest titles from each brand. Content sets have also been updated to feature more cinematic, poster-style artwork.
While several of these design updates apply across living room screens, the company says enhancements to the mobile experience are also in progress.
Widgets are launching on iOS, offering users another way to dive directly into programming with a single click. Looking ahead, Disney+ plans to introduce mobile-first and mobile-exclusive experiences to expand reach and engage new audiences.
According to the company, “These enhancements are just the beginning, with additional updates planned in the lead-up to the launch of a unified app experience next year.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source content-technology.com ’















