Project overview

As a regular user of this streaming platform, I often experience many frustrations and wished it could be improved. So I have begun this project by doing further analysis of the key functionalities and the usability of the site.

The key issues were:

Search functionality

Its functionality is very basic, and lacks common features like filter/ sorting options.

Movies/ series page

There is a filter option, however the selections are limited and unorganised.

Homepage

Content listings can be overwhelming showing a long list of categories and causing information overload issues for users. They also have inconsistent orientations and hierarchies.

I did some initial research, looking into some common issues users are experiencing, and there are some technical issues such as the autoplay feature stops working and full-screen mode exits itself after the content finish playing. One of the UX/UI problems users mentioned was that they didn’t like the homepage’s continue watching section and it takes them to where they left off straight away rather than showing them the content details first. There is a small icon that takes them to that page when hovering over the content, however it is clear that the button needs to be more obvious, or perhaps the default action for clicking on all the content always takes users to the content page first.

Initial secondary research

Primary research

To understand more about users' behaviours and their thoughts on the platform, I decided to carry out some user interviews.

Overarching question:

-How can we upgrade the current users‘ experience on the platform?

Key areas/ questions I wanted to find out:

-An example of user journey

-What features do users enjoy/ dislike using?

-Have there been any issues/obstacles that occurred?

-What are their overall impression of the site?

-Are they an user of other streaming platforms?

Here is the interview script I used as a guide but due to the nature of conversations, they can often go in a different direction however might end up getting insightful responses so I made sure to ask follow-up questions after. I have chosen 3 participants in this interview and they are all active users of the platform.

After the interviews, I sorted out all my notes with an affinity diagram to summarise my key findings, insights and recommendations.

The designs

The findings showed different usability issues across the pages and I decided to work on the search function first since it is one of the top features on the platform but also seems to be the most problematic.

Filters

It lacks the ability to filter the search results such as their genres, content types, and channels. Having a ‘sort by’ option would be useful so users can see the newest to oldest content etc.

Explore

The current explore section below the search bar doesn’t add much value to the page, the content available is collections, and a participant mentioned users might not always be looking for a series, so they wouldn’t be looking at the collections, if they are on the search page, they are most likely to be looking for a specific movie. Perhaps a better alternative would be to replace it with trending content.

Tags

Another feature mentioned was tags, as it was brought up by the participants, they suggested that having tags would be useful, the tags could be relevant to trending actors/ words people use to describe a particular genre such as ‘light-hearted’...’gritty’ etc.

Adding tags to the content can give another level of filtering to users, helping them find better-tailored content. It can also be used to promote the most popular searches and suggest recommendations to users.

Search function

Homepage

I’ve adjusted the layout so the channels are now at the top of the page and this section could be fixed as users scroll down to the rest of the page for easy access. The content at the top could also show its trailer as users hover over it to take advantage of the use of space.

The ‘Continue watching’ row should be prioritised first so users can easily see where they left off previously. ‘Recommended for you’ / ‘New to Disney’ / ‘Because you watched ____’ can then come after. I’ve removed all the genres that are currently listed on the homepage as it can be too cluttered and unnecessary since users can easily access them on the movies/ series page or simply run a search.

Another comment made by the participants was that it seems to be an infinite horizontal scroll along each row with no indication of how much content there is, so I’ve added a page indicator as well as fixing the arrow icons on fixed instead of only showing on hover state.

Movies/ Series

On the movies and series pages, the same filter options from the search page can be reused to keep the experience consistent. Also at the moment, there’s no way to use the filters to select genres for documentaries, it needs more focus, and adding documentaries to the series page would make the overall navigation clearer.

Movie's page

Instead of navigating to another page when a movie is selected, a modal might be a better option as it gives users quick access to the movie information while keeping them on the same page.

The information at the top should be emphasised more as people tend to look at that section first however with the current design, the eyes are not drawn to it and instead they would go straight to the detail tab at the bottom, as it’s clear to users that they will definitely find movie information there.

With the flashing light warning, it's hidden in the detail tab below the movie description which is bad practice in UX so I've changed it to an icon and move its placement to the top so users with accessibility issues can quickly see this.

Watch history

It was mentioned that having a watch history page would be useful as it was sometimes challenging to find the continue watching section on the homepage as it’s not always fixed on the top of the rows. Having a history page lets users quickly access what they last watched and when they watched it etc.

Quiz

I have added an extra quiz feature onto the platform as it can provide tailored content to users based on how they feel on the day, another reason is users often spend a long time choosing what to watch, so I believe this feature can help save them time as well as creating a fun interaction/ experience. It also adds a playful element to the platform, connecting with the brand. To enhance the user experience for the future, this feature could help personalise content for users by collecting their viewing preferences.

Overall UI

The UI has been readjusted to feel more on brand, and I’ve chosen some lighter shades within the colour palette so overall it feels brighter, more vibrant and exciting. Minimal glow shadow effects are added onto some sections to bring out the ‘magical’ feel of Disney, and being cautious with overusing it which can make the interface look cluttered and also cause accessibility issues. Shapes now have rounded corners so they look softer visually and give off a more approachable/ friendly feeling to users.

This was a fun project for me as it was interesting to understand other users’ perspectives of a platform I personally also use often, the pros and cons, then use their feedback to make improvements to the platform. I believe that the key issues that were mentioned at the start have been addressed and if there was more time I would like to do a more in-depth UX analysis, mapping out the user flows to cover the full site. It might also be beneficial to carry out some user testing to validate the effectiveness of the design and make some potential improvements.

Key Takeaways