Watchit

A social movie and show seeking platform for indecisive viewers.

This design challenge tasked groups with creating a website that would simplify a users experience online.

Our group designed an online platform that connects all of your media streaming accounts and adds social features. With this users can more easily view everything available on these separate platforms on one page and interact with user recommendations.

Interactive Mid-Fi

Overview

This design challenge tasked groups with creating a website that will simplify and enhance a users daily online experience.
Our group took on the task of improving the users experience with online media streaming.

Roles and Responsibilities

User Research
Ideating
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Visual Design

Design Tools Used

Research

Problem Landscape

Social technologies have the potential to greatly benefit many people due to their interactive nature. COVID and this new time
of social isolation have caused many people
to seek out new opportunities to connect remotely. A key activity while staying at home
is watching shows and movies.

However, there are many opportunities where this experience can be improved. Watching shows and movies can be a great way to relax and rewind but many people find it very difficult to quickly find something to watch depending on what they are feeling, what will satisfy all of the individuals watching and what is available on their streaming services.

"How might we make at-home movie/show watching an easier and more enjoyable experience?

User Research

Our initial research consisted of analyzing various social technologies related to movie/ show streaming as well as other apps that do a good job of connecting people with their friends.

This research consisted of looking at customer reviews, interviewing people in our target user group to understand their experience and opinions on some of these apps, and researching unique features offered on each of the apps.

We conducted contextual inquiry based interviews with five participants to understand how they choose what to watch and how they navigate their favorite streaming services. We gave them the task of finding a show or a movie to watch on whatever streaming service they please and prompted them to explain their thought process along the way.

Product Goals

The findings from these interviews aligned with the online research. People took quite a while to choose what to watch (ranging from 10-45 min), they were overwhelmed with the choices, and they frequently based their final choice on preference and recommendations.

From our findings we created a list of goals we want our solution to achieve:

Simplify the users selection process through relevant recommendations.
Enable the user to easily fine tune their search with search tools.
Reduce the amount of time it takes for the user to find something to watch.

User Journey

Empathy Map

In order to best encapsulate the information we gained from our user interviews, we created an empathy map that contained the users thoughts and feelings about the streaming services currently available.

Personas and Journey Map

Using all of the previously mentioned research, we created two personas that best portrayed our target users. Using these personas we also created their journey maps that portray their current experience when searching for a movie or show to watch.

Prototype

Wireframes

After we got a better understanding of our target users and their needs, each group member created some wireframes of how the website could potentially look.

*The wireframes pictured below are only the ones I created.

Low Fidelity Prototype

We all then brought together all of our wireframes to critique and pool together aspects we liked from each one.

All our ideas revolved around creating a website that would allow users to connect
their streaming services and follow friends.

Home Page

A low fidelity prototype of the website was then created. This prototype consisted of five screens that best demonstrates our goals with this website and also key features that will be included in the final version.

Browse Page

Friends Page

Friend Profile

My Profile

Testing

Lofi Usability Tesing

We conducted wizard of oz testing on the low fidelity prototype with six participants of various ages. This testing was done through the use of contextual inquiry and observations. Participants were given scenarios that would put them in the position of using the website and then asked to navigate the prototype to complete the scenario.

Scenario #1

"You are about to sit down to watch a movie, but you are not sure what you would like to watch. You want to see what your friends have recently enjoyed. Navigate to where you believe you would find this information."

Scenario #1 Evaluation

This scenario would start the participants at the home page and test whether it is simple for them to view recommendations and reviews from their friends.

Scenario #2

"You want to see if the website is able to give you some good recommendations based on your current interests. Navigate to where you think you can find some good recommendations."

Scenario #2 Evaluation

In this scenario, we hoped to see if people would find the browse page but also notice the quiz. The quiz is a big feature that we want to include in our final design so we also further questioned our participants what they thought about this feature.

Scenario #3

"Recently you were trying to remember what rating you gave to a movie. You want to check your rating and ensure that it is accurate to your current feelings about the movie. Go to where you think you can find this rating."

Scenario #3 Evaluation

This last scenario was to have participants navigate to their profile page and see if they could understand the information displayed on this page. We also further questioned them on other aspects of the page such as connecting other platforms, genres, and watch list.

Final Design

Interactable Prototype