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Problem Statement
This was a school project where my team and I aimed to simplify digital streaming by developing an iOS mobile app that precisely identifies where to find your favorite shows and movies. Digital content streaming is immensely popular, with brands like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Disney offering a vast selection of movies and TV shows. However, users often face the challenge of finding specific shows across these platforms. We aimed to change that.
What I Did
I was a UX and visual designer on this project – responsible for research, user interviewing, user testing, UX, and visual design.
Team
One UX/visual designer (myself), team lead/designer, and prototyper/visual designer.
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Approach
We used the Goal-Directed Design process to guide our project. This is a waterfall approach that emphasizes research and testing before diving into the modeling and design stages. We conducted this intensive research on the domain, and then identified project goals to confirm our "definition of done".
Goal-Directed Design Process
Project Goals
Help users discover new and existing content they may want to watch (Our users' biggest pain point)
Centralize the latest streaming content around diverse categorization and include robust details for each listing
Improve filtering, sorting, and the clarity of which content is entering and leaving platforms
Competitive Analysis
Looking at five
existing platforms
Testing / Personas
We interviewed three students that had varying levels of streaming service usage. The goal was to get a range to cover multiple use-cases. I took notes and asked follow up questions whiles my teammate moderated.
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Interviews and quotes
Requirements
We placed personas in context scenarios to understand how they may use an app like Spotter, and what requirements they may have for its functionality. We identified these four:
Find a specific movie or show and where it can be streamed
Display information in an easily digestible format
Recommendations of content personalized to the user
Ability to keep a running list of shows the user is wanting to watch
Framework
To guide our wireframes, we first tried to determine a key path scenario that would imitate the most utilized path one might take within the app. From there, we began remote usability testing and refinement of our wireframes.
Selected final Screens
The final designs prioritize clarity and visibility. Providing more labeling, better grouping and better use of white space for easy scanning.
Goal 1: Discover relevant content
We addressed our first goal by designing a robust onboarding experience that gets to know your tastes and your streaming platform usage.
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Goal 2: Simple content exploration with detailed listings
Our users wanted to be able to see which platform their content was on without too much trouble. We made it simple to explore without feeling overwhelmed by all of the options.
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Goal 3: Enhance content filtering and sorting
Our audiences were desperate for a way to see which content was entering and leaving platforms and a way to filter by every category known to man.
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Learnings
Our user interviews and usability testing greatly impacted the final prototype we ended up with, and I learned a lot about the importance of iterative design through the many versions of the app we cycled through while trying to meet our users’ needs.
The designs I came up with didn’t always click with my teammates and the designs we finally agreed on didn’t always meet our users’ expectations. It was a lesson in compromise and I was lucky to have a team that could pivot and approach each problem that came up in a way that always resulted in either a new perspective or an improved app feature.
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