NFL THURSDAY
NIGHT FOOTBALL
Enhancing how fans discover, watch, and engage with TNF
Overview
As viewership for Thursday Night Football surged, Prime Video expanded its live sports experience—introducing new ways for fans to personalize viewing, discover concurrent games, and engage with real-time insights.
Role
Senior UX Designer
Amazon Prime Video
2022-2025
Challenge
Design enhancements that deepen engagement and clarity without disrupting the broadcast—balancing traditional viewing expectations with streaming interactivity across a rapidly growing, multi-platform sports ecosystem.
Approach
As Senior UX Designer on the Playback Experience team, I led multiple TNF initiatives, focusing on interaction speed, consistency across devices, and alignment with Prime Video’s evolving discovery framework.
ALTERNATE BROADCASTS
This feature streamlines navigation between Thursday Night Football’s alternate feeds—National, en Español, and Prime Vision—allowing viewers to switch broadcasts seamlessly during live games.
After its Emmy-winning launch, I assumed design leadership to refine the in-playback experience. My focus was on metadata alignment, UX copy consistency, and ensuring the carousel framework matched Prime Video’s evolving, content-agnostic design system.
The result was an enhanced, accessible interface with a clearer hierarchy and consistent visual language—delivering a unified experience across living-room, web, and mobile platforms while reinforcing continuity across the broader Prime Video ecosystem.
LIVE SPORTS DISCOVERY
The Live Now feature lets viewers explore and switch between concurrent live sports events without leaving the active Thursday Night Football broadcast—creating a seamless in-play discovery experience.
After concept approval, I led design through development and launch, refining metadata hierarchy, channel badging, and reordering logic based on a viewer’s last-watched event. I also ensured consistent behavior across living-room, web, and mobile platforms.
Feature Expansion
The result was a unified, intuitive discovery layer that now supports Prime Video’s expanded live sports portfolio, including NBA broadcasts in the U.S. and UEFA Champions League coverage in the U.K.
PRIME VISION r&D
The Prime Vision initiative explored new ways to enrich Thursday Night Football broadcasts through data visualizations and augmented overlays that deliver real-time game insights.
In collaboration with Product and Live Production teams, I led rapid prototyping of animated concepts using the all-22 camera view—testing opportunities for pre-snap and in-play storytelling. Each concept balanced analytical depth with on-air timing and clarity.
These explorations informed Prime Vision’s production roadmap, shaping future directions for data-driven storytelling and advancing how live sports visualization can engage and educate fans.
TNF x AMAZON APP
To extend Thursday Night Football’s reach, this initiative brought live and pre-game content directly into the Amazon Shopping App, inviting customers to discover and watch TNF without leaving the retail experience.
I led design for the embedded playback experience—defining controls, transitions, and navigation aligned with Amazon’s new storefront UX system. Partnering with the Amazon App and TNF marketing teams, I established the card layout, metadata hierarchy, and state logic that connect browsing to live viewing.
The launch expanded TNF’s visibility beyond Prime Video, creating a seamless, cross-app entry point for live sports engagement across Amazon’s ecosystem.
IMPACT
Across multiple Thursday Night Football initiatives, I helped broaden how fans access live sports on Prime Video—making it easier to discover concurrent games, personalize viewing, and gain richer, data-driven insights.
Collectively, this work advanced Prime Video’s sports experience beyond a single broadcast—extending TNF into new surfaces like the Amazon Shopping App and establishing a foundation for in-playback discovery later applied to NBA and UEFA coverage.
“Chris is the ultimate UX designer and truly an expert in his craft. We worked together on Scores & Stats for all sports and laid the groundwork for new visual innovations implemented in the 2024 TNF broadcast.
His comprehensive approach—researching trends, understanding customers, questioning the vision, and creating beautifully simple designs backed by strong rationale—sets him apart. He’s the first person I’d recommend for anyone looking for a UX designer.”
Dan Pawlowski
Product Manager, Prime Video Sports
Disclosure
Quotes, media references, and imagery presented above are sourced from publicly available press releases and sources related to Thursday Night Football and Amazon Prime Video.
All trademarks, logos, product imagery, and interface mockups remain the intellectual property of the NFL, Amazon Prime Video and their respective owners, and are shown here solely for illustrative and informational purposes. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.