The User

User Persona & Scenario

Amanda is a 21-year-old college student that will be graduating in the spring. She wants to throw one last spooky movie night for Halloween before she graduates, so she starts preparing. Amanda knows that she will be having a few guests over tonight for a spooky movie night. She’s making finger foods and plans on playing spooky movies since Halloween is this weekend. She’s wanting to find a playlist of movies that are spooky movies but doesn’t want to create this herself. However, she knows that her friend Daniel has excellent taste in movies. While everyone is grabbing their party favors, Amanda opens up the Netflix app and does a search for Daniel’s profile by looking up his unique username. Once she finds it, she is able to add this playlist to her own profile and notify Daniel of any movie she watches and what she thinks of it.

The Problem

How might we help consumers share Netflix content amongst each other?

Netflix does not yet have a social function, one in which a user can navigate their way to another’s profile so that they can view the movies & playlists that their friends are watching and enjoying. By implementing a feature such as this one, a user can open up a world of possibilities where they can create playlists, save other playlists to their profiles, rate movies, and notify their friends that they have watched said movies and playlists.

Empathize

As a consumer, I can empathize with the need for the social aspect that Netflix has yet to offer. As a designer, I noticed the need for this feature to be added, making the application that much more valuable and appealing to a user. I decided to research applications that have a similar function. However, no other movie/show streaming service has this function. After digging into other streaming services, I was able to develop the function you now know as Netflix Friends.

User Interviews

In order to get a better idea of what was needing to be added to Netflix, I talked with some of the streaming service’s biggest fans, college-aged people. By interviewing each person and asking what was missing, I was able to get a better idea of what Netflix was in need of.

Empathy Map

Based on what Netflix users had to say about the current application, I created an empathy map to display the thoughts, feelings, and expectations of our users to help identify pain points and opportunities to improve more clearly.

Pain Points & Feelings

From the empathy map, I was able to create a journey map that would lay out pain points and feelings in order to know what needed to be worked on.

The Challenge

The challenge provided in this assignment was to create a platform where a user could both stream content and be social with the world by sending and receiving content from within the application. However, this needed to be done in a manner that felt as if the feature were embedded in the app rather than something like a plug-in.

The Solution

The first streaming platform to allow a consumer to be social. It not only allows users to view others’ recently watched but also allows users to make playlists and share ratings and reviews with the rest of the world. This is done by the additional “Friends’’ button located at the bottom of the screen alongside all the other Netflix features that users are familiar with. While in the Friends section, a user can easily view their friends’ top 10 movies, playlists, and ratings/reviews. The feature allows the popular “Netflix binge” to expand relationships.

Goals

Goal 1: Integrate the feature

Goal 2: Content can be shared

Goal 3: Expand relationships

 “How Might We”:

Make actions feel fluid?

Give someone confidence in their selection?

Show different reviews of movies?

Include a screenplay feature from a mobile device?

Allow the app to be notified once the movie is over to allow review?

Skip the rating and reviewing process overall?

Opportunities:

Can we decrease the amount of time searching?

Could we display all user ratings?

Can we design a space for closer connections?

Can we allow for ratings and reviews to be shared?

Can content, such as playlists or reviews, be shared?

Can a user select who to share the reviews with?

Could the ratings be publicly or privately shared?

Sketches

Sketches were done to further develop the ideas for screens before jumping into wireframes.

 Wireframes

Link to Adobe XD Prototype

 Things that went well:

1. “Friends” button was in a good location

2. Option to skip the rating/review section

3. Users found the function to be helpful

Things that didn’t go well:

1. Buttons need to be bigger

2. “Skip ahead” button needs more information

3. More information on the movie (description/ratings)

 Feedback from High Definition Screens

After designing the final screens for Netflix Friends, we had one last user-testing round to ask people their final thoughts on the function and the screens.