Movie Time
Mobile app for enhancing the group movie watching experience by helping friends plan and decide in advance.
Problem
Watching movies is always fun and even more relaxing and fun when watching them with friends. The process of coordinating with friends and narrowing it down to "What to watch" is frustrating and annoying. Even if the group decides to take turns, it is difficult to remember - who suggested what and when!
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Product Design
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Tools Used: Sketch, Framer
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Self Project
Real life Scenario:
A group of four friends meet every weekend and during holidays and end up watching a Netflix series or a movie on the television. All of them are movie buffs but unfortunately, every person has a preferred genre. Every week when they decide to watch movies, they start discussing the options, rating of the movie, review of the movie, and availability in the streaming platforms!
Sometimes this discussion takes longer than the duration of a movie!
My Role:
Played the role of Product designer
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App concept creation.
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Coordinating with the technical team.
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Design solution.
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Wireframes.
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Prototypes.
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User testing.
User Research
As a first step of the project, user research was conducted to understand the user’s needs and pain points.
How can friends or family watch movies or series together?
Users can watch a movie anywhere. There is no restriction on the medium. A group of friends can watch a movie by renting a DVD from Redbox or watch all the episodes of Netflix on the living room television.
Four major sectors who have the frustration of movie scheduling and would need a solution are:
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Friends staying together at University.
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Partners living under the same roof.
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Teen kids living with parents.
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Friends who watch movies often together.
"61% of young adults in the U.S. watch mainly streaming TV"
User Interview
1:1 user interview was conducted to understand the current movie watching process. Participants were meticulously selected. Two main factors considered when selecting the participants are movie watching frequency and the frequency of movies watched with others.
“There are several instances where we spent more time trying to select the movie than the actual movie runtime! “– participant -1
“After finalizing the movie, we realized that the movie was not available in any of the streaming platforms, I was the unlucky one to drive to the Redbox kiosk! “– participant -2
Pain points of the users?
The major pain points of the group movie watching experiences are
What movie to watch?
How to watch?
The frustration of what movie to watch and confusion about how to watch happens because of various reasons.
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Too many movie options!
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Need to check the rating and review.
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Multiple language options - confirm if the preferred language is available.
Based on the user research the following mediums are identified as the top platforms for watching movies or series together:
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Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney (Netflix now has over 148 million subscribers worldwide!)
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DVD Rental service - Redbox
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Movie in theater
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Synchronized viewing (on the browser)
“About six-in-ten of those ages 18 to 29 (61%) say the primary way they watch television now is with streaming services on the internet” - pew research
Defining the problem:
The problem statement was defined so that it can be used thought the design process and used to validate the final solution as well.
"Create a solution to help a group of friends who meet frequently to schedule and enjoy movies without frustration across all available movie watching mediums"
Sophia / 19 / Female
"We always have an argument picking a movie to watch together"
Emily / 29 / Female
“I don't like sports movie and he forces me to watch them "
Asher / 50 / Male
"I watch the movies with my family and rarely they agree to watch the movie I select"
Target Audience:
Created the following three personas to cover the targeted user base.
Job: Student.
Frequency of Movie: 1-2 movies a week.
Watch movies with friends.
Watch movies via Netflix, Movie theater, Amazon Prime.
Job: High School teacher.
Frequency of Movie: 1-2 movies a week.
Watch movies with spouse.
Watch movies via Movie theater, Amazon Prime.
Job: Bank Manager.
Frequency of Movie: 0-1 Movies per week.
Watch movies with family.
Watch movies via Redbox.
Customer Journey Map:
We decided to walk a mile in the user’s shoes and that's how we created the customer journey map. This map helped us to understand the user journey and empathize with the customer's end to end journey.
Analysis:
Problems:
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What movie to watch?
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How to watch?
Netflix now has over 148 million subscribers worldwide.
Initial Whiteboard Sketching:
Wireframes
The wireframes went through multiple iterations before finalizing the final design
Solution or sample flow
The solution is to provide an equal opportunity to all the members
1. John Doe downloads the app from the app store.
2. Shares the link with 3 friends.
3. All the friends' download the app
4. All the members see the same set of cards.
5. This is a 4 member group.
Member -1 can edit ---> card1,card 6,card11
Paper Prototype
Prototype
The wireframes were converted into prototypes using Sketch.
Interactive prototype
An interactive prototype was created using Framer
Usability Testing:
The interactive prototype was tested with the participants.
Created the following task for this activity
Task 1: Add a movie.
Task 2: Update the watched movie.
Task 3: Check the next scheduled movie.
The feedback from the usability testing was incorporated back into the design.
Future enhancements
The interactive prototype was tested with the participants.
Created the following task for this activity
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Suggest or check platform availability
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Book tickets or purchase movie
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Vote for the selected movie
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Create multiple groups
Conclusion:
It was a great learning experience to take a real-world problem and work towards the solutions. I had to do multiple iterations during the wireframing stage and during the prototyping stage. These iterations helped to shape the product.
One of the important design principles which were followed throughout the design process was KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid). The solution was a simple round-robin method of taking turns, but I am sure this will solve this problem and eliminate confusion.
Once the product is developed and available for the users to download, I am planning to use Google’s HEART framework for measuring the UX. This framework would be the right fit for this product.