Netflix New Feature
The Challenge:
Implement a design solution that would create more awareness on Netflix original shows to develop a following.
The Solution:
Our group decided to implement a social feature on the application that would promote collaboration and sharing shows between friends and family.
The Process
Establish Roles (my role was to manage the persona, paper prototype and the high fidelity prototype).
Understand the business debrief and conduct user research to better understand the demographic and pain points of the target.
3. Using the data collected from the user research, we concluded on a target audience and the pain points they may encounter when using the Netflix App. This guided the team to the creation of Max the Movie Watcher.
4. Using the information gathered we were able to hone in on a problem statement that would guide the rest of the project.
“Max needs a way to discover and share new shows with friends so that he can break out of his current viewing bubble.”
5. Once we established a clear understanding of the user and their problems, our group conducted a design studio in which we brainstormed solutions to the user problems.
6. We concluded that we would create new features that would allow for adding friends to view others' watch lists and a new algorithm that creates suggestions based on friends’ histories and watch lists.
7. Then we conducted usability testing on this prototype. Key insights from the usability tests included:
The plus sign that was meant to help people add friends was confusing and people thought they could add movies to their list and not friends.
People also were confused with the geometric circles through the new screens, thinking that they had similar functionalities.
Test subjects also enjoyed the possibility of seeing what friends are watching to help them decide what to watch next.
8. Insights on low fidelity and mid fidelity iterations.
Key Screens that were changed were the friends page and individual friend page which were redesigned to make navigation easier through.
Icons were made uniform throughout the project.
A clearer onboarding process was introduced to help users understand how to use the Flixswipe feature.
9. Our group moved on to another round of usability testing in which we discovered that the following iterations needed to be made before the final product was created. Those iterations included:
Naming conventions of features needed to be changed. “MyPod” became “Friends”.
The onboarding process for the Flixswipe feature was still not clear enough for users.
Users needed buttons to help them escape from screens.
10. This round of usability helped us to better understand what needed to be changed before finalizing the most viable product (MVP). We used the last usability test as a north star for the development of the high fidelity prototype.
Conclusion:
While our final high fidelity prototype satisfied the requirements of the MVP there are certain aspects of the design that we would like to change. Some of these things include:
Making buttons and navigation more intuitive for users
Continue to create cohesive designs throughout the pages
Conduct more usability testing to identify significant pain points before sending the design to the development team
