Who is Netflix, and what are they struggling with?
Netflix is a globally recognized streaming service that has led the industry since launching streaming in January 2007. It offers TV shows, films, and original content to its 277 million subscribers worldwide.
Recently, Netflix has faced heightened competition and is struggling to maintain its top position among subscribers. To drive innovation and enhance user engagement, Netflix’s goal is to introduce social and sharing features to its mobile app.
Team & Timeframe3 UX Designers, 2-week sprint
RoleLead UX Researcher, UX Designer, Project Manager
…or read on to learn more about how we got here!
MethodsBusiness & user research, competitive analyses, sketching, prototyping, usability testing, wireframing
Putting out feelers to unlock general insights
The team conducted a screener survey to weed out users who are not subscribed to or do not regularly use streaming services.
We received 28 responses, with respondents’ ages ranging from 24-55. From there, we successfully interviewed 14 users.
We found that:
96% of users discuss series & films in person, and 75% discuss via SMS/phone calls.
Only 50% of users are likely to share about and/or discuss a series/film via social media.
Although the insights we uncovered were not necessarily significant to the rest of our design process, they provided helpful context as to how users socialize and their habits surrounding streaming service usage.
Exploring the parallels between social connections and streaming services
In interviewing our 14 users, we zoomed out to gain perspective on users socialization habits and influences as a whole to emulate these experiences on streaming services. Thus, our questions were framed around:
Users’ social lives and habits.
Activities they enjoy and/or dislike engaging in with others.
Social media usage.
Social battery duration.
Preferences as they pertain to using streaming services.
We compiled all of our data and created an affinity map to group insights and pin key trends. Considering the limited scope & timeline of the project, we focused on the below takeaways to inform the definition of our ideal user persona.
I interact with social media to share and receive recommendations.
Socialization is a baseline necessity and good for my health.
I socialize to share in experiences with others.
My social battery depends on day of week, who I’m with, and my work day.
I prefer to watch content from the comfort of where I call home.
It takes me a long time to decide on what to watch.
Get to know Casey–and her typical weekday after work
Equipped with the most significant trend groupings from our user research, we crafted our target user: Casey, the streaming service connoisseur.
Enjoys meeting up with others to catch up and share in each others’ experiencesLikes to lay on couch & browse for something to stream on TV while scrolling through social media for suggestionsSends close friends memes/activities that she wants to do on Instagram to share interests with one anotherWants to engage in discussions about films/series with others while making meaningful connectionsExpends excess time and energy finding something to watch, both alone and with othersCasey's typical weekday illustrates the difficulty and frustration that surrounds searching for a series or film to watch, starting with optimism that she can try something new and ultimately resulting in her re-watching a show she has seen through multiple times.
Thus, Casey needs to discuss and share movies with others in order to achieve a sense of community and human connection–and cut down on the time it takes to find something to watch.
Tackling Casey’s problem
The team brainstormed about the various angles that could possibly approach Casey’s problem and ways that we could address her frustrations. We identified the three most valuable potential solutions that Netflix could provide with their app redesign.
How can we help users express feelings when watching content?
How can we create a space for users to feel comfortable sharing their opinions on media?
How can we provide users with the opportunity to make real connections with others?
It was also important to consider the competitive landscape as we exhausted every solution we could.
How are comparators approaching socialization?
To understand how competitors design products for users, we conducted research on social media networks and alternative streaming services, including Teleparty, Amazon Prime, YouTube & YouTube Live, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
We found Letterboxd particularly inspiring for its seamless integration of social media elements like Instagram and TikTok, focusing on films and reviews instead of overwhelming content.
On this platform, users can write humorous or critical film reviews, engage with others, save films to watch later based on recommendations, and much more.
Narrowing the scope
Based on the data we collected, the team considered several options to help users achieve their goals, such as scheduling a shared calendar for remote viewing or using live group messaging. However, we ultimately chose a simpler flow due to our two-week time constraint.
This flow not only enables users to easily find a movie or show that aligns with their interests, but also provides them with the opportunity to interact with interest groups and ultimately other humans with similar interests.
Laying down the framework
We conducted multiple rounds of sketching, putting our heads together at the conclusion of each to elect and eliminate features.
The team went with the features below in our low fidelity prototype, with some inspiration from Letterboxd and Instagram.
We integrated FlixFeed as a new feature in Netflix’s mobile app, accessible via a footer icon for easy navigation. The homepage was redesigned to include custom categories and display which of the user’s “friends” are online.
Users can access FlixFeed to view their profile, online friends, groups, and their feed, which features reviews from users they follow and recently watched films and shows. Inspired by Letterboxd, this layout encourages user interaction.
In interest groups, users can find others with similar tastes, streamlining their search for films while fostering meaningful connections. The interest group page displays online members, a spotlight film chosen by the group, recommendations, and curated lists.
Once the user taps into a specific profile from the group page, they would see a profile icon, username, and bio, as well as the user’s stats. To allow users to personalize their profiles further, we replicated Letterboxd’s list curation feature.
After a user concludes watches a film or series from Netflix, they are prompted to write a review. The review page is similar to Letterboxd’s here as well–with different icons. Then, the user is given the opportunity to add it to their “recommended” list.
To determine how users would potentially interact with FlixFeed and the overall usability of the feature, it was time to put our low fidelity prototype to the test.
Measuring impact and areas to improve on
The team had the opportunity to execute usability testing on 5 users, with the primary objectives of (1) determining whether the feature is easily navigable and intuitive for users, and (2) determining whether the users could complete the outlined tasks without any errors.
Users were then given tasks like navigating to FlixFeed, interacting with the interest group and users within the group, playing a user-recommended movie, and writing a review of said movie.
Although 5/5 users successfully completed the tasks, many were met with confusion.
2/5 users pointed out the lack of prioritization and disjointed styling of the content and the frames.
Unclear to users what streaming with comments entails
Unclear what would happen for rating vs. liking
Unclear what each button meant at bottom of review page
Profile icon and “online friends” icon are different sizes
“Films watched” text in two lines
Confusion as to why this category is important on feed page
“Your Feed” is center aligned and different header style
3/5 users found that specific actions lacked clarification. These were specific to terminology used throughout the prototype.
Users also expressed interest in the ability to curate lists and voiced their appreciation of the “% Taste Match” available on the other user profile, as well as the social community building aspects of FlixFeed.
With honest feedback from real people it was time to build out a fleshed out, higher fidelity prototype–applying our discoveries from our first round of usability testing.
Consistency throughout design is key
Before making any real changes, we first needed to determine whether Netflix’s current colors were accessible and lay out a design system for the purpose of consistency, simultaneously addressing one of the critical insights we uncovered from usability testing.
We selected the Inter font in various weights to closely align with Netflix’s existing design system, establishing padding and alignment specifications for consistency. We also introduced a green color for confirmation states.
During our accessibility evaluation, we encountered some challenges with Netflix’s current colors. Both red variations against a black background met the large text and graphical AA standards, with a contrast ratio of 4.38:1. However, since we used these reds solely for the FlixFeed logo, we made an exception.
All other color combinations passed the WCAG accessibility checks.
What did we change?
With our well-established design system and the feedback we gathered from our low fidelity usability studies we determined that we needed to hyperfocus on our flow to cut out the background noise and buckle down to fix the visuals of our prototype.
Homepage updated to more closely reflect Netflix’s–keeping all FlixFeed features in its own page
Group page broken down into members, group recommendations list and top rated group reviews
Film description page updated to more closely resemble Netflix’s current layout, including a “Reviews” tab
Main FlixFeed page broken down into groups user is part of and feed, which shows reviews from other users
User profile page revamped, featuring one review and various user-curated lists
Thanks for reading!
Removed “like” feature from write a review page, updated with an “add to list” feature and changed icon terminology
Is FlixFeed the natural next step for Netflix?
Once we completed the finishing touches on our high fidelity prototype, it came time to conduct another round of usability testing. This time, the team was able to test the application on 6 users. We assessed with the same objectives, scenario and tasks as our low fidelity usability test.
6/6 users were successfully able to complete all tasks, all expressing that FlixFeed felt like a natural next step for Netflix to implement.
That being said, there were some specific features that users specified they would like to see moving forward:
3/6 users expressed that they would like to be given more suggested content after they “watched” the film and wrote the review.
3/6 users attempted to click on the “More” and “View All” options when browsing horizontal scrollables.
2/6 users wanted to be able to interact with other users’ reviews, on top of just being able to “like” them.
Patience, alignment and meticulousness
This project allowed me to really understand the inner workings of a complex sprint and the necessity of narrowing down on what we could realistically deliver for a user-worthy solution. I learned that there is not one single way to prescribe the design process to a project and that diverting from the path is okay.
Patience was truly a crucial element throughout the process of working within a team to this capacity. Although I have worked collaboratively in the past, this project was a culmination of hours of challenging teamwork. Being meticulous and as detail-oriented as possible was the only way to reassess and reach our final solution.
What’s next?
If the two week time constraint was not at play, I would have built out more flows for users to play around with–specifically a live chatting feature–and added a banner to the homepage spotlighting the FlixFeed feature, as the assumption with our user flow was that the user had already used FlixFeed in the past.