HBO Max: Sign in Experience Optimization
Heuristic Evaluation, Cognitive Walkthrough I Streaming Onboarding I Impact: +1.7 % increase in overall login success rate, with additional possible impacts with future work
When subscribers can’t sign in, they can’t stream, and every failed login is a potential churn moment.
I led a heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough of HBO Max’s sign-in flow to identify friction points across devices and regions, especially among HBO Max older coustomers. My goal: make it faster and more intuitive for users to get back to what they came for, watching content.
Low-Effort Research,
High-Impact Fixes
Background & Objective
The sign in product team wanted to investigate pain points in the sign in experience to understand future opportunities to drive measurable impact for conversion. Data analytics were clear that sign in was especially an issue with the QR code and manual password and the team was particularly interested in understanding drop off among older customers.
Past research had already supported a baseline understanding of where issues arose and it was deemed that additional, time consuming research wasn’t needed. The objective was to pinpoint where the design no longer matched user expectations, and provide clear, evidence-based recommendations to reduce friction and improve success rates.
Methodology
Literature Review: Reviewed and synthesized industry research on login heuristics, password recall, and device-based authentication to establish evaluation criteria as well as past team research into the sign-in experience.
Heuristic Evaluation: Audited the full sign-in journey (mobile / tablet / TV) against Nielsen-Norman and platform-specific guidelines (Android, iOS, CTV), ranking issues discovered against a team-wide established UX severity scale and business impact scale.
Cognitive Walkthroughs: Simulated user attempts across real devices, documenting confusion points, input constraints, and error messaging.
Findings
All usability issues identified during the evaluation were documented in a detailed spreadsheet and synthesized in a follow-up report highlighting the most critical pain points. Each issue was tagged by severity level and mapped to the Nielsen Norman heuristics, giving the team a clear, prioritized view of opportunities for improvement. This structure also enabled Product and Engineering to make informed trade-offs based on effort and impact.
Key Findings:
Error Recovery Gaps: Frequent errors occurred during QR code and Wi-Fi sign-in processes—some tied to specific devices, others to user behavior or underlying bugs.
Device-Specific Inconsistencies: Authentication steps varied significantly across platforms (e.g., QR vs. manual input), creating friction for multi-device users.
Manual Email & Password Entry: The traditional sign-in flow was slow (required typing with a remote, depending on the remote could be extremely time-consuming) and error-prone, representing the highest potential area for improvement. Nielsen Norman heuristics were applied to guide design recommendations that streamlined this experience. This is also one of the more common ways to sign in for the older customers, the same cohort the team had seen more drop off from.
Recommendations
My recommendations focused on the biggest areas of opportunity or “low hanging fruit” fixes that could create outsized impact:
Improvements in bugs, especially for the wifi-enabled sign in experience
Updates to QR experience to work across new and old devices
Unified error handling and more visible error messaging devices
Better sign in understandability and readibility to explain how to use, the lesser understood experience for wifi sign in.
Simplified 2-step QR login on connected TVs
Simplified Email log in, reducing the to input a password with a remote.
Impact
After reviewing the areas of improvement, the Product team focused on the manual sign in experience, reducing the need to fill in a password and instead applying a email OTP (one-time passcode_ approach.
With this first sign in improvement, the overall login success improved by +1.7 %, representing hundreds of thousands of smoother entries each month. This project also established a standardized heuristic review process now used across the UXR org for feature audits.
Reflections:
This project reinforced how powerful a “small but strategic” heuristic audit can be in driving meaningful improvement. Rather than launching a large-scale study, I leveraged existing analytics and a focused heuristic + cognitive walkthrough across devices, and saw a +1.7 % lift in login success.
Key takeaways for me:
The importance of platform consistency: Differences in sign-in flows between TV, mobile and tablet were not subtle, they created user confusion, especially for older customers. Designing with cross-device mental models in mind can shortcut friction.
The need for low-friction alternatives: Switching from manual password entry on a remote to email OTP (One-time passcode) significantly reduced the burden. It highlighted that usability for “basic” flows is just as critical for retention as new features.
The value of scalable research deliverables: Framing issues by severity + business impact helped the Product & Engineering teams balance trade-offs and move quickly. This project also paved the way for a standardized heuristic review process in the Growth org.
In hindsight, if I were to run this again I’d build in time for a brief usability validation of the recommended fixes before full rollout, this would help quantify which specific design changes delivered the lift. I’d also advocate earlier stakeholder mapping to ensure alignment on platform variances up front, so we’re not surprised by device-specific constraints during audit.
Overall, this experience deepened my conviction that even “back-end” flows like sign-in, often overlooked, are critical moments in the user journey. Optimizing them not only reduces drop-off, but also builds trust and momentum for the broader product experience.