Netflix brings your loved ones closer

Role: UX Research

Team: Carrie Liu, David Kolomiyets

Tools: Figma, Slack, Monday.com, Zoom, Trello

Timeline: 2 week sprint

OVERVIEW

Because of the pandemic, we stopped going out and socializing, which led to us spending more time in front of the TV, laptops, phones etc. Platforms such as Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus have recently developed a feature that allows you to host a movie night with your family and friends or perfect strangers — it’s up to you! What a nice and thoughtful way to help their users stay connected and have a good time. Netflix, which is one of the most popular streaming platforms around the globe, did not really take into account the needs of the new reality. Our team was tasked to find the solution for the national favorite that will allow users to watch movies and shows together, and connect from different locations.

Note: This project was in line with the educational program of the General Assembly UX Design Immersive.

User interviews

We wanted to begin by understanding users’ needs and goals.

We conducted 15 interviews with Netflix users asking them the following questions:

• What do they do?
• How do they maintain friendships/family bonds today?
• What kind of fun things do they do during the pandemic?
• How was their personal experience of virtual events if there was any?
• What does it mean to watch a movie with a group?

We needed to refine all raw data from interviews into subject categories. Our team used affinity mapping as a way to discover trends and main pain-points.

Key takeaways are:

• Some users feel that they lost their bonds with friends and family
• Watching a movie alone feels depressing
• Lots of users said that they would love to do virtual parties or movie nights;
• Hulu or Disney Plus didn’t have a video feature, it didn’t feel real
• Most of the interviewee want to see their friends’ reaction, hear their laugh, and simply be able to talk and comment while watching a movie as If they were sitting next to each other

We also created a persona that embodies all the needs, goals, expectations and concerns of our users.

Raphael is an upcoming movie star, living in Seattle. His friends call him “movie judge”. He is a big fan of Netflix, as well as loves going out to a local movie theater with friends or drive-ins. His main frustration is that he can’t watch Netflix with friends because they all have been isolated since pandemic started. If there would be an option to have a virtual movie night, he wants it to feel real.

We used Raphael in every step of the process, which also helped us keep the objective in focus.

Problem Statement

We need to strengthen the interaction between people and create an experience that will feel real when it comes to virtual movie nights because lack of connectedness during a pandemic left users feeling deprived and disconnected.

C&C

Next step was to analyze our competitors and comparators that helped us to identify the market, compare similar feature on the competitor’s platforms and find a place for improvement.

We used Hulu, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime, Netflix Party as main competitors because these platforms have recently implemented community streaming feature. We summed up all features and its functionality in the list below and compare them.

The features that were not found within the competitor’s platform but considered important by our users according to the data we’ve got from interviews:

• Video option,
• Failed to allow the host to start and end a movie at the same time, pause a movie for the group.
• No public watching

As a comparator we looked at Zoom and Skype as these applications are mainly focused on video telephony and online chat. Zoom and Skype gave us inspiration for design, layout and common features used for teleconferencing such as having bottom navigation, position of video screens above the movie, chat box on the right side of the screen.

Zoom

Our prototype

Design phase

Each member of the team sketched and shared low-fi solutions based upon users’ needs along with features that competitors were lacking. Shortly after we decided on the best ideas which we implemented in medium-fidelity wireframes. Our wireframes were iterated three times, polished and refined.

Usability Testing

During the usability test we wanted to build a feedback loop with our interviewee to ensure our product works for them that’s why we asked them to complete few tasks while think out loud.

For the usability test users had to start a party, pick a movie, invite friends, use screen’s options such as extend/minimize the screen, hide friends’ video screens and end the party. We conducted 6 usability tests that allowed us to gain deeper understanding through a combination of both qualitative and quantitative information.

Feedback from usability tests allowed us to add another feature that lets users see who accepts an invitation. It was confusing for the most users as they didn’t know when to start a movie unless they knew who was going to join them.

More of the insights:

‘Very cool, easy and simple navigation”

‘Overall is a very great and intuitive”

‘How do I know if they accepted my invitation”

The key insight from mid-fi testings has been implemented into a high fidelity prototype, such as adding a notification that allows users to see who is accepting an invitation.

From the high-fidelity usability test, we obtained the following insights:

• Users wanted to add a friend from the movie room
• The mute button was missing.

High-fidelity prototype

Next Steps and Learnings

High-fidelity version of Netflix has been well received by our users and showed positive results. However, we would like to continue to iterate the design and do more usability tests with people with disabilities. In other words, we want to take steps towards product accessibility.

Lessons learned

The main lesson I’ve learned is that working in a team tremendously increases chances for a product to succeed and building relationships with my mates was a crucial and powerful decision that led us to desired results 90% of users’ satisfaction.