Improving content discovery for multilingual OTT viewers
How I Solved storefront problem that actually went live.
Context
About
Aha is India's OTT to Watch Movies, Web Series, TV Shows, Live TV Channels in Telugu & Tamil. Aiming to be to be the premier global provider of 100% regional content
Challenge
As part of the UX hiring process, I was tasked with rethinking and combining language storefronts to improve discovery, increase engagement, and drive subscription growth, all within a tight 3-day timeline.
Outcome
Seven weeks later, on 11 February 2026, Aha shipped a major update in exactly the direction I'd designed: one unified storefront, with language as a preference rather than a wall.
My role
UX design, UI design
Team
Product Designer (me), Head of Design, Product Designer
Timeline
Dec 2025 (3 days)
The real challenge wasn't "merge two storefronts."
Currently language is being treated as a wall, where everything on the other side isn't for you, so merging really means Aha no longer wants to divide users by language at all and it lands differently on three kinds of users: Bilingual users, Single-language users, Existing users
and getting it right for all three users, without hurting the business, was the actual challenge
⛓️💥 What was Broken?
🗺️ How I approached this
After secondary research, the pattern I found was good content and subtitles beat language every time. "Good Cinema is not bound by languages." The pan-Indian wave RRR, KGF, Pushpa proves it at scale.
And bilingual viewers aren't an edge case. Per the 2011 Census, Telugu is the second-most spoken language in Tamil Nadu 5.87%, or ~4.5M people living across both languages every day.
So bilingual viewers became my target without leaving single-language users behind.
Solution
I scoped changes to an MVP to validate the idea quickly without impacting core flows for existing 40M+ users, minimising negative user impact and enabling faster decision-making.
Validation plan
Before Launch
A/B testing to test user exploration flow.
Usability testing to learn adaptability(with Language-dominant users, Bilingual & explorer users)
Duration : 2 weeks (vary depends on budget and time).
After Launch
Measure how quickly users find relevant content (CTR, Time to First Play, Bounce Rate)
Measure engagement with cross-language content (Plays, Completion Rate)
Track free-to-paid subscription conversions
Track 30-day and 90-day user retention
Measure whether bilingual users stay longer and generate more revenue
🥳 Two months later, Aha shipped it.
This was a 3-day take-home, so I never built it live. But in February 2026, Aha released a major update and it moved in exactly the direction I'd designed.
Impact
🔎 Discovery & engagement:
Surfacing relevant content across languages so users start watching sooner, with fewer dead ends.
📐 Easier to scale
A single unified storefront supports new languages without creating separate experiences or rules in different tabs.
💰 Increased subscription value
A catalogue that feels twice as full for the same price, giving users more reason to convert and stay
Learnings & future scope
Design around the risk, not just the happy path
Naming the single-language user's frustration early is what shaped the whole "language as a signal, not a wall" approach
Opportunities beyond the challenge
While exploring reviews, I noticed recurring frustration around subscription value and platform glitches. If I had the opportunity to work on the product, I would dive deeper into frustrations and explore how design could contribute to improving the overall experience.