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Netflix: Watch Party - Case Study
Exploring social interaction in solitary entertainment
Netflix is an innovator when it comes to online streaming services, pioneering the early days of online television and revolutionizing the way society consumes their entertainment. Despite being a mainstay in online streaming services for over a decade, Netflix seldomly receives updates to their site. In particular, we observed a distinct lack of social features that have become increasingly popular in our ever connected online world.
Our goal was to explore whether or not social features would positively impact our user’s experience and if so, what features could Netflix integrate into their system to remain a frontrunner in the online streaming industry?
The Process
Before exploring this topic, my teammate, Rochelle, and I defined our roles. Though we each played an integral part in all aspects of this sprint, we assigned our roles to better suit our areas of expertise, with Rochelle as our research lead, and myself as our design lead. With our roles defined, we were ready to dive in.
Research
Being Netflix users ourselves, we began by considering our own assumptions about our user base before conducting user interviews. This helped us define what we thought we knew and what we definitely did not.
With these assumptions in mind, we were excited to explore deeper, to either validate or challenge those assumptions. We knew users could provide insights about topics we wanted to understand.
As a team we concluded we wanted to learn the following:
What are our users’ relationship with streaming platforms?
What are our users’ social behaviors online? How do they interact with others?
How do our users connect with online communities?
Interviews
We set out to interview 10 Netflix users who stream television regularly and who also use social media regularly. We defined “regularly” as “at least a few times each week”. With our criteria set, we were excited to get to know our users better. We began by crafting interview questions that would elicit the most insightful responses. We asked questions like:
How do you stream television?
Walk me through the process of finding a new show to watch.
How does social media fit into your life?
Insights
Through affinity mapping, we were able to synthesize our interview findings into three distinct key insights that definitively guided our designs.
Insight #1
Our users are socially driven. They want to share, discuss, and watch their favorite programs with each other.
Insight #2
Our users engage with platforms that have high interactivity. They engage by being an active participant in their chosen entertainment.
Insight #3
Our users are frustrated with Netflix’s current architecture. They use classic genres to guide their search for content and find Netflix’s suggested categories unfamiliar and obscure. They dislike endless scrolling and easily get lost in Netflix’s current structure of disorganized arbitrary categorization.
Pivoting
The third insight was not aligned with our original intentions when we set out to complete this project in three weeks, but after uncovering the data, we knew this was an opportunity to pivot our designs to suit our users’ needs.
One final surprising insight we received from our screening surveys was that 40% of our users (majority response) primarily stream Netflix from their computer, not their smart TV.
Before our research, we made the assumption that we would be designing a smart TV application, but from this insight we realized we must instead start with a web-based solution.
Comparative Analysis & Heuristic Evaluation
Once we concluded synthesizing the data from our interviews, we had a decisive direction for our designs, but we knew there was more to discover. To assist with our ideation, we first completed a comparative analysis to better understand what types of social features Netflix could take inspiration from. Lastly, we performed a heuristic evaluation of the current Netflix design to see where it falls short of serving its users.
The most notable takeaways we found during this phase of research were the obvious lack of social features despite an abundance of inspiration from comparators like Twitch and Spotify, and an overcrowded homepage that struggles to direct users to the most relevant content.
The Problem
Users need a way to interact socially when streaming TV because it enriches their viewing experience.
Also, the current site's architecture has poor learnability due to the arbitrary categorization of content and seemingly random organization of those categories--so we knew that was something our design should address in addition to facilitating social interaction.
User Persona
Keeping these insights in mind, we crafted our primary user persona to assure our designs aligned with our users’ goals, needs, and frustrations.
Ideation
With our research complete, we were well equipped to begin ideating our data driven design solutions. We determined possible solutions by brainstorming answers to the following how might we statements:
How Might We...
Encourage users to engage with each other while streaming?
Direct users' attention to the most relevant content?
Make watching TV more interactive?
After brainstorming, we discussed an array of possible solutions to pursue, from forums, to user created groups, to content clipping, to shared playlists. We were brimming with excitement at the volume of opportunity. Although many of these solutions ultimately answered to our persona’s needs, we needed to hone in on our MVP. What solutions do we feel confident in providing in exceptional quality given the time constraints?
Solution Overview
After discussing our ideas, we determined our MVP must include an integrated way for users to interact together during synchronized viewing sessions. With that in mind, we began sketching and wireframing our designs.
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We determined this solution best addresses our users’ craving for social interaction. Another insight we uncovered during our research is that 70% of our users are already multitasking while consuming digital entertainment, so we knew our solution should complement their existing mental models of balanced viewing and distraction. From this solution, we also recognized opportunities for interactivity and social connection by providing affordances for user interaction through the watch party’s integrated chat feature.
In order to allow our users to more easily select a title to watch with friends, we realized we must also overhaul Netflix’s current information architecture. Our aim was to direct users to the most relevant content by reducing content density. We sought to organize Netflix’s selection into predictable genres that suit our users’ expectations.
50% of our users commented that their content preferences centered around classic genres
While only 10% commented that the current categories suggested by Netflix were helpful
Many of them remarked that, although they appreciate the seemingly endless variety of content on Netflix, the organization of that content makes it difficult to select a title. Although the current design does in fact offer classic genre sorting, we determined the feature to be inadequately implemented because it’s not easily discoverable. We believe reorganizing Netflix's current information architecture will address our users’ frustration of narrow and ambiguous content categories.
The Details
The first change users will notice is the condensed format. Users can navigate through a tab-based system that narrows focus to the most relevant content. We reduced the design to a single row of scrollable content to reduce scrolling fatigue and help users achieve their goal of finding something to watch more easily.
They’ll also find a new top nav menu where they can find their favorite titles organized by the classic genres our users expect.
To facilitate the watch party feature (and the additional features we hope to explore during our next iteration), we determined it was essential to allow users to add each other, so we added a friends list.
During our research, we discovered that our users don’t typically schedule synchronized viewing, they’re spontaneous, so we built our solution to match. From here users can join their friend’s open watch party.
And most excitingly, the watch party itself. Here users can host synchronized viewing parties where they can text and video chat, all within an integrated system.
Main content display
Mobile chat QR code
Watch Party settings
Chatroom
Webcam chatroom
Emotes
Although we focused our design around our web-based users, we determined that 30% of our viewers primarily tune in from their smart-tv. To accommodate them, we implemented a mobile chat feature. Users can scan the QR code to join the chatroom from their mobile phones if they aren’t viewing from their computer.
The Prototype
We're really excited to share the results. Check out the video demonstration below to see how all the pieces fit together.
Usability Testing
We conducted 4 usability tests to assess the success of our solution. Our user tests confirmed our design was both intuitive and exciting for users.
4/4 users were able to correctly locate and identify the function of the friends list, top nav, browsing tabs, invite button, and chat button with 0 errors.
All 4 users remarked they liked the functionality provided by the new features.
Adjustments
1 users attempted to click the share icon instead of the "start Watch Party" button when inviting friends. We intend to add hover state descriptions over textless icons to reduce confusion.
1 user was unable to identify how to turn their webcam on without prompting. We intend to change the text for the webcam CTA to say, "Turn my webcam on" to direct users more clearly.
Looking Forward
We're really pleased with how the final results turned out for this iteration and are looking forward to implementing additional features in the next sprint.
One feature we’re excited to implement in the next iteration is emotes. Unfortunately, we were unable to conceptualize them entirely within the time constraints, but we accounted for them in our prototype. We hope to include custom emotes themed from the content our users love streaming most. By simply viewing a show or movie, users will unlock a set of custom emotes themed around that specific content, which they can then use in the Watch Party chat room. We believe this will provide viewers a rewarding way to engage and interact.
Another trend we recognized from our research is that 80% of users mentioned receiving or sharing recommendations between their friends. Our users love recommendations and find new content by sharing with each other. We hope to address this insight in our next iteration by implementing a friend recommendation feature, which we also accounted for in our prototype.
Opportunity
Netflix has masterfully captured user attention in the digital entertainment space. However, their design seems to focus on one exceptional user experience: finding and consuming entertainment. From the work we conducted, we recognize an immense opportunity for Netflix to not only entertain its users, but engage them with the platform. We believe facilitating collaborative interactions between users has the potential to recapture users attention by providing more meaningful interactions in an otherwise solitary form of entertainment.
Thanks for reading!
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