Design Process

Research

Understanding the Why with User Research

First, my team and I conducted user interviews to understand the pain points and goals of those who use Netflix and other areas to explore in our research. We developed a interview script and conducted our user interview with participants. Interviews were done remotely over the phone and in-person. I asked the individuals some questions about their TV/video watching habits, mainly focusing my questions around the Netflix experience.

Quotes from User interviews

“I am not sure if they have this feature and if they do then I haven’t tried it yet but a “watch with friends” feature would have been nice especially during the pandemic. I’d like the “watch with friends” feature to have a “host” who can control the play/pause action and all viewers can be synced perfectly.”

“Didn’t like the recommendation they gave me, felt like the content was being pushed onto me and didn’t match his criteria”

Market Research

We began the process with a research goal in mind to understand how people choose what to watch, understand the social connections with others while using Netflix along with investingating any other areas for improvements that haven’t been addressed in the current state of the Netflix app. We conducted a competitive analysis. I spent some time looking into a few other streaming platforms and what offerings they had. We identified the strengths and weaknesses between Netflix’s biggest competitors, Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max, all which do not have any outstanding social features.

I encouraged our team to leverage user reserarch and testing to validate any solutions before jumping into redesigning. After synthesizing the data from research we then identified some behaviors and patterns. We then created a persona using the research from the 1:1 interviews and surveys we conducted.

Key Takeaways

• some individuals would want to see what others are saying about their favorite TV show, while others didn’t really care to post about it

• Users were not satisfied with teh Netflix Suggestions and wanted the opportunity watch with others

In order to understand who the key users were we then created a persona.

From the research we created the persona, Adrian who represetnts a large portion of Netflix users who balances a few other streaming platforms. He prefers streaming TV shows and movies at home after a busy day then discussing what happened with friends and on his social media.

Now that I had a better understanding of Netflix users and discovered multiple pain points, it was time to focus on creating solutions. From insights and needs of the user we then conducted some “how might we?” questions in order to start working towards a focused design.

• How might we implement socializing features into the Netflix native app on tablet and mobile?

• How might we help users receive recommendation from their friends?

• How might we give users recommendations that better match their mood and interests?

  
  

Ideation

User Flow

Potential Solutions

The research made it clear how different each user would use the Netflix app differently. After summarizing the information from the user interviews and data analysis, it was time for sketching different solutions to help the users and business.

Above are some sketches from the ideation process of what the community section would look like in the top navigation. In the middle is the create a room feature with possible channels for users to interact in. On the right would be an early look at how the pause screen would possible look like with a group button integrated along with cast/movie information below.

Design

Wireframes

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

The screens we had were from all scenarios so I started to do grayscale wireframes to provide more detail in the flow. At the same time we ran a prototype test with users to fix any problems that occured during the process. This set of wireframes shows what a user would encounter as they progress from the homescreen, TV show/move preview, creating a group and casting options.

In my lo-fi skethces I had initially included a possible Netflix Live Events page along with a community page. After disocvering the split results of having those additional pages it had created confusion with the purpose of a community page and having too many options on display from the primary research results and user feedback.

Test

After receiving feedback on the mid-fedlity prototype, I incorportated the branding and UI into the wireframes and made significant revisions based on feeddback and testing. Based on the timeline of the project, I focused on the tablet version.

Samples of the updated/new screens that can be explored further via the prototype

I created a high-fidelity prototype of the main user flow using Figma. This allowed me to put my designs to life, see how the interactions flowed in real time, allowing the new features to stand out.

Project Learnings

• Conduct many tests and validating ideas before proceeding with any features.

• Keeping the users and objective top priority during the whole process

• Prioritizing key features while keeping the visual design of the brand

There was confusion during the testing of having a Community page and a possible Netflix Live events page but the choice for removing them in the later iterations of the process reflected back to our original research.