Tracking your media watchlist, made easier

I enrolled in Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate class on Coursera, and for my first project I designed a Watchlist app that saves your favorite shows’ episodes and helps you explore upcoming ones in response to today’s popular video streaming climate.

Role Designer

Context Case Study

Contribution Research, Ideation, Design

Duration 3 Months

 
 

WHAT’S THE CONTEXT?

Streaming services today are constantly releasing content, and users are having difficulty keeping up with them. Watchlist’s goal is to help track these shows, but that’s not how this project started.

My initial prompt was to design a movie app that also helped users to follow their favorite actors and directors’ upcoming projects. Following the design thinking process, I interviewed frequent moviegoers to hear their needs, conducted a competitive analysis to see how similar movie apps fulfill the needs of their users, and then lead a usability study with my wireframes to gather insight. After the usability test interviews, I redefined my project to serve a new purpose and ideated the design into a solution.

 

THE CHALLENGE

Consumers can rejoice with streaming services warring against one another as they pump out content for our entertainment. However, that can be burdensome when users must keep a mental note of when their favorite shows are releasing across multiple streaming services and networks. How do I relieve users of this burden?

 

OUTCOME

I prototyped this concept with 4 people and 75% of them said they would use this tool because it would be helpful to conglomerate their shows from multiple streaming services.

 
 
 

Design Approach

Research Goals

Before interviewing users, what do I want to know?

Key Insights

What did I learn?

Users want the experience

Users said they would go to a theater for the cinematic experience of a movie they were looking forward to or as a social event with friends.

They keep up with social media

Social media generally does a good job of advertising movies, but sometimes users were surprised to hear what’s been released.

Follow feature is useful

Some users would use this feature, and for those that wouldn’t, said that they knew someone who would.

 
 

Competitive Analysis

How do similar apps satisfy their user needs?

 

What Functions do the Users Need?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Purchase movie tickets

Watch movie trailers

Profile page for actors/directors

Bookmark function

 

Usability Study

I conducted a usability study with users that would go to the movie theater at least 6 times a year. Here, I learned their moviegoing habits, particular needs, and experience with my wireframe.

 

Key Insights

What did I learn?

Users were confused

All users were unsure in how to begin using the app.

Didn’t like the clutter

Participants did not think this app was relevant enough for them to take up space on their phones.

App is redundant

Users didn’t think there was room to optimize current movie apps.

Wanted to track progress of shows instead

“I would use the app if it gave me episode updates on things I am currently watching, like Demon Slayer or something.”

- Interview Participant

 
 

Takeaway

Users did not think my app was useful, so I’ll address a new need that one of my interview participants shared.

The users did not believe that a typical movie app where you can also follow actors and directors solved any of their needs, so they wouldn’t want this tool on their phones. Users also didn’t believe there was room to improve similar movie apps. So, I took this opportunity to redefine my project to address the new need from one of my participants, and create a tool for people to track the progress of their shows.

 

Problem Statement

How might we relieve users the burden of keeping a mental watchlist of all of their shows?

 
 

Ideation

How do similar apps’ styles look?

Across various movie and streaming service apps, their home pages typically have the same look. This style would continue with my app. The home page would present users with new and trending shows, and they would have the ability to bookmark and filter them by relevant tags.

 
 
 
 

Home and explore page ideations

As I was considering the layout, I thought about the sizing of the show’s poster and presentation of its related info. I chose to prioritize poster size to take up majority of the screen’s width to be consistent with the cinematic theme. For the explore page, major streaming service’s content are scrollable horizontally and there is a search function.

 
 

Next Steps

My next steps would be to change my target demographic to users who frequently use streaming services and to adjust my research questions. Then, I would repeatedly iterate and conduct usability tests until it’s fine-tuned enough for a final design.

Conclusion and how I could have improved

  • My research questions could have been more relevant.

  • Pivoting the project from one person’s feedback was not enough, I should have done more user research before moving forward.

  • Often times I was relying on what I think was best when I should have been more user-centered and focused on research.

  • I should have been more mindful about my time management given that there was a deadline for this project.