Designing Roku apps

This document highlights Roku's approach to UIs for streaming media, with progressive levels of requirements which are crucial to pass Roku's app certification process, as well as create a well-designed Roku app. While apps that do not implement all best practices may still be deployed on the Roku platform, the practices outlined here are known to improve the user experience, which directly affects the engagement and value of your app on the Roku platform.

This Design section describes the following topics:

  • What to keep in mind when designing for a TV UI.

  • What are the proven design principles and guidelines Roku uses when designing UIs that

    • Are, simple, powerful, useful, and familiar?
    • Encourage more TV viewing?
    • Have high customer satisfaction (NPS)?

  • What are the best practices for designing Roku apps?

    • Roku has a developer program comprising of various UI components – how are they expected to be used?
    • What are the key features that streaming users expect in a good Roku app?

  • What does Roku require for app certification?

    • Some features and UI paradigms are required because the Roku brand represents a certain expectation of quality and usability for the customers.

      • E.g., Require Instant Replay buttons support and specific trick mode features