Netflix Mobile App ReDesign

*A tiny but important little disclaimer: The following are materials pulled from a “conceptual design” or “speculative project” educational exercise - but that doesn’t mean it was easy…*

Overview • Research • The Misstep • Ideation • Usability Testing • Iteration(s) • Results

Movies and TV were made the be enjoyed together. Our users reminded us of that. This redesign keeps users feeling connected with new shared streaming possibilities.

Overview

The Brief:

  • Design new features on the Netflix mobile app to integrate social activity and sharing between users while allowing Netflix to retain top billing against its competitors.

The Problem:

  • Netflix is a streaming service that has over 260 million subscribers (yourself or someone who is letting you mooch most likely included). Yet, within the app itself, users feel far away from one another.

The Scope:

  • My Role: UX Designer + Researcher

  • My Team: Me + Ryan Nightingale + Tehila Nissanian

  • The Timeline: 3 weeks

  • The Platform: Mobile App

  • The Tools: Figma

The Results:

  • Although these features were not integrated into the actual Netflix mobile app, our users' feedback during usability testing suggested that implementing these features could improve social interaction and connectivity among the platform's subscribers, leading to heightened app engagement and usage.

Research:

We Went Window Shopping: Competitive & Comparative Analysis

The Likely Candidates:

The Not-So-Likely Candidates:

The Features We Felt Were Worth Trying On:

  • Amazon Prime’s Watch Party Feature

  • Instagram’s pinned post and post-sharing features

  • Discord’s ‘Go Live and Screen Share’ feature

  • Twitch’s interactive live-streaming feature

  • Sportsurge’s live-streaming and live-chat features for live sporting events (legality status of this feature = I’m not too sure)

In-Depth User Research (Qualitative):

We conducted 7 user interviews

  • Originally, we set out to understand how users are using the streaming services they subscribe to to find new content to consume and how they receive and send recommendations for new content from others/to others

  • Here’s what that looked like:

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User Profile:

  • Ages 20-63

  • Has the habit of watching TV series/movies online

  • Has at least one streaming service subscription

The Misstep

  • After we conducted our original user interviews and analyzed the data, we came to a standstill.

    • The data that we had synthesized from our user interviews didn’t match up with the client’s needs for integrated socialization features that we’d set out to address.

  • Our original target user was: people who utilize streaming services - pretty much everyone (whoops).

    • This led us astray when writing our user interview script and defining our original research objective.

    • No sweat. Back to the drawing board to make a few tweaks.

  • We updated our target user to: people who watch movies and TV socially. Much better.

  • Our new research objective was: To understand how people socialize, watch TV/movies together, and use media to share their experiences.

  • To compensate for this mistake, we knew we’d need to do 2 things:

    • Dig deeper than normal during the background questions during usability testing

    • AND recruit 2 additional interviewees and update our script to ask questions that dug deeper into the social components and environments that TV/movies and the culture surrounding them create.

    • Here’s what that looked like:

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Course Correction: Meet Movie Maven

Goals and Motivations:

  • Maven frequently uses online streaming services

  • Maven shares their favorite shows with friends

  • Maven enjoys organizing spontaneous movie nights

Pain Points

  • Maven finds it challenging to discover new content

  • Maven desires an accessible way to find new content

  • Maven has difficulties organizing gatherings, including scheduling and communication

Maven, tell us what you need:

User Need Statement: Maven enjoys the entertainment provided by watching TV and movies but ultimately values the social connection of sharing these stories with others

Two Features to Bring to Life: After deliberating on how to meet both Maven’s need and Netflix’s needs, we settled on designing and implementing 2 new features: a Watch Party feature and a friend-pinned recommended title feature

Ideation

lET’S MAP THIS OUT

  • We created our sitemap alongside our sketches.

  • We knew from our user interviews that there is content that users prefer to watch alone, and then there is content that users prefer to watch in groups, and then there is content that users prefer to watch with specific groups of people.

    • Because of this insight, we decided to categorize our “Available for Watch Party” content by audience and by occasion (as opposed to by genre).

  • Netflix’s original navigation is mapped out in pink, and our new navigation is mapped out in red.

Let’s Sketch This out

  • Feature #1: Friend-Pinned Recommendation

  • Feature #2: Watch Party

Usability Testing

  • 3 tasks

  • 5 users

Task #1:

  • Incorrect/not-intended places that the users clicked to try to complete the task = outlined in red

  • Correct/ intended places that the users clicked to try to complete the task = outlined in green

  • To dismiss Maven’s hypothetical friend Sarah’s pinned recommended title from the home page

  • Fail rate = 4/5 users… oof not so great

Task #1 Solution(s)

  • We added an “x” option on the friend-pinned title to address confusion our users had dismissing it during usability testing

Task #2

  • To locate the “Available for Watch Party” category and schedule a watch party

  • 4/5 users completed successfully, although some users originally clicked on non-intended areas

Link my other project here for easier access.