Netflix Watch Party
Designing a feature that allows users to socialize while watching their favorite shows
Who is Netflix?
Netflix is an American media company based in Los Gatos, California.
It is a subscription-based streaming service that allows its members to watch movies, TV shows, and short films on an internet connected device.
Role
Student Project Manager (In a team of five with a Research Lead, Visual Design Lead, Interaction Lead and Content Strategy Lead)
Methods
User Interviews, Feature Inventory, Heuristic Evaluation, Affinity Mapping, Sketching, Hi-FI Wireframes, Prototyping
Tools
Figma, G-Suite, Maze, Asana
Timeline
February 2022
Platforms
Desktop and Mobile Responsive Website
Netflix users want to feel connected with friends while watching their favorite shows.
Netflix is constantly struggling to stay at the top of its industry as more competitors enter the market, stagnating their growth. How can we help Netflix become more engaging for users? My team’s goal was to explore how to improve the social aspect of watching group parties to increase engagement.
There’s currently a third-party browser extension, called Teleparty (below) for watching Netflix remotely with friends that synchronizes video playback options and adds a group chat. However, the company does not have its own local watch party function.
PROBLEM
Netflix’s third-party browser extension called Teleparty
SOLUTION
How might we allow users to feel connected with friends on Netflix’s interface?
Invite Friends to a Private Watch Party
Give users an option to invite people without changing the current interface
Decreases the learning curve of picking up a new feature
Explore Live Streams
Live stream exploration page for more content
Users can interact with their favorite influencers
Feel part of a community of like-minded people
See Friends Online
Stay on the same interface to find friends
Quickly see what friends are watching
RESEARCH: UNDERSTANDING OUR AUDIENCE
The majority of our users enjoy interacting during and after a show.
To understand the behaviors and motivations of our users between the ages 22 to 31, we collected survey results and performed six live, in-person moderated interviews to understand the following questions
How do users typically enjoy watching shows and why? (Alone, with friends, or with family?)
When do users watch shows and what do they typically do when watching shows (i.e. chatting, texting, eating..etc)
How often do users like to socialize while watching shows?
From the forty-three survey results and six user interviews,
Over 55% of our users prefer to watch movies or shows with family and friends while the remaining either preferred to watched TV alone or in theaters
Users enjoy real-time discussions and seeing each others’ reactions (through emotes and camera) while the movie or shows are playing
Users want to continue chatting after the movie or show is done playing
ANALYZING COMPETITORS AND UNCOVERING GAPS
Most direct competitors have their own group watch function. Common features were important to incorporate in our designs
I performed a feature inventory against three direct competitors, Hulu, Amazon, and Disney Plus, and three indirect competitors, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch.
Feature Inventory of Netflix against direct and analagous (indirect) competitors.
The top seven features that were common features amongst competitors were important to note and include as part of our designs, where applicable.
The bottom two features, live streams and link sharing to social media could bring differentiation to our design that were not as present with direct competitors. We included those in our design since we wanted to design live streams.
PERSONA
Research synthesis led to our persona, Matt
After synthesizing research , we consolidated what we learned about the user and created the persona, Matt, a 27 year old full-time college student who moved closer to his college in Colorado.
He misses his close friends and family and wants to stay connected any way he can
He feels homesick and lonely sometimes being away from his family
He loves to watch shows and connect with people afterwards
User Persona
We then created a user journey for Matt to seek out potential opportunities.
Scenario: Matt finishes his last class and is urgently waiting to finish the season finale of his favorite show, Ozark. He hopes to talk about it with someone after he’s done watching the show.
Matthew’s Journey Map
DESIGN
Giving users two paths to join watch parties
As a team, we carried out a design studio considering 2 different user paths: one for hosting a private watch party and second for joining a public (live) event.
From the user flow above, we created a final version sketch below that guided in the design of our high-fidelity designs.
TESTING AND IMPROVEMENTS
5 major feedback points and iterations
We conducted usability tests for the initial high-fidelity mockups on five users who are Netflix Teleparty users OR regular Netflix users who do group watches frequently outside of Netflix.
Per the usability tests, the items below were where we received the most insights. The observations applied across both the desktop and mobile platforms.
1. “Live” Navigation and Watch Party Icon
(1) Observation: ALL users did not recognize the “Live” navigation button and didn’t click it immediately.
Iteration: Re-design the navigation element for the “Live” page to be easily identifiable
(2) Observation: 3 of 5 users struggled to find the watch party icon and failed to identify it timely. However, all users liked the placement of the icon.
Iteration: No iterations needed. We did not iterate on the design because as users liked the placement and deemed this feature easily learnable.
2. Invite Friends Page (for Private Watch Party)
(3) Observation: 4 of 5 users failed to invite friends to a watch party in a timely manner. There were excessive clicks needed for this task
Iteration: Re-design the invite functionality to be more intuitive.
3. Live Stream Page and Friends List
(4) Observation: ALL users liked the ability to view friends online and wanted to see it more integrated throughout the Netflix interface
Iteration: Incorporate Friends feature throughout Netflix.
(5) Observation: ALL users found the “Live” page confusing as it looked too similar to Netflix’s home page. Users wanted to see a more differentiation
Iteration: Re-design the “Live” page to contain relevant details about live streams and match real world conventions for live streams.
THE FINAL PROTOTYPE
The Final Product
Desktop Prototype Made from Figma
Mobile Prototype Made from Figma
CONCLUSION AND GOING FORWARD
What would I do differently?
This was my first group project and I’m grateful to have learned so much about the design process and working with a design team. These were a few things that I learned:
Test more areas. It would’ve been helpful to perform A/B testing on the friends feature and live stream feature to understand the placement better. The timeline was very short. so we didn’t get the chance to explore other designs.
Research more successful watch party designs. Although we did a competitive analysis and assessed for popular features, we took a lot of design inspiration from Disney+, which is catered to a different kind of audience from Netflix. I believe that we may have focused too much on a design we liked instead of what was practical for our target user. This led to user confusion in our flows.
Re-design our user flows. We approached this project with two distinct user flows in mind; 1) one to host a private watch party and 2) another to join live streams. However, as we progressed to testing, I realized that there were areas of overlap between the two flows as users constantly questioned the difference between the two. Both flows were about attending watch parties but the difference was that one was private and one was public. I believe we could have designed something more cohesive and more logical for the user. For example, allowing users to fill out a form to host a watch party with a simple toggle of making it private or public (live). This might make more sense to the users and be a more learnable and seamless user experience.
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