Streaming Platforms User Experience the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The consumption of movies and T.V series has forever changed with the birth of streaming platforms. Suddenly the ability to binge-watch your favorite show is accessible instantly, without the investment of purchasing a hardcopy.
With this great innovation, a user’s habits have evolved creating new pain points when interacting with streaming platforms. Binge culture has thrived, viewing parties have been frequented, and live television just doesn't slap the same.
A User’s pain points:
1. Users hate endlessly scrolling through irrelevant content.
2. Users are impatient with commercials.
3. Users are impatient to wait for the next episodes.
Notes: Instant gratification has ruined us.
Regardless, a user is still going to choose a streaming platform over going to their local blockbuster to watch their favorite content (jk blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010). Streaming platforms are the number one way a user consumes video content. From Youtube to Netflix almost every major network has its own individual streaming platform/ app. So, what have users come to expect when using a streaming platform?
A User’s goals:
1. Users want to be able to easily search for their content.
2. Users want to be able to browse and have suggestions for new content.
3. Users want to be able to control and save their progress within their content.
Now that streaming platforms have been around for a while, we have all come to expect basic features as a baseline. With the streaming platform market competitive the supreme streaming platforms stand above the rest. Unfortunately, the horrible streaming platforms also stand out. Let’s take a look at what features make streaming platforms good, bad, and ugly.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Good- Amazon Prime Video X-Ray feature
Amazon prime video X-Ray feature provides information on pause; actors, directors, music playing during a scene, and a scene list so you can jump around. How many times have you paused a movie to look up the actress in a scene? Amazon has found a way to streamline information and create a new feature that complements a user’s innate consumption habits.
Bad-DirecTv stream; No live rewind feature?
With the invention of Tivo & ReplayTV (Digital video recorder aka DVR)in 1999 the ability to pause and rewind live TV has been a feature for over two decades. While DirecTV stream does have DVR and gives users the ability to record from live TV, it lacks the ability to let a user rewind. DVR live rewind has become a basic technology that users have come to expect.
Ugly- Quibi
Quibi was a fast and quick burn fire that officially closed its doors only six months after launch despite huge buzz from celebrities such as Chrissy Teigan, Sophie Turner, and Liam Hemsworth. Perhaps it’s because Quibi tried to push short-term content down their user’s throat, the high price, or maybe it really was the timing of the pandemic that never gave Quibi a chance. They simply refused to pivot to their users by creating longer content while people were trapped at home. Quibi’s mobile-only app completely inhibited their user’s from taking screenshots creating a huge pain point and eliminating the best form of free media advertisement, memes. I guess no one told Quibi that original short-form content exists for free ….. YouTube.
Good- Disney+ circa 2022
The first initial debut of Disney+ was underwhelming. Disney+ released a minimum viable product while slowly updating features and fixing bugs. Upon release, interacting with the UI of the platform was frustrating, (especially because Disney is a multimillion-dollar company)basic buttons like restart wouldn't spawn, the app would often freeze, leaving much to be desired.
Disney+ has now evolved into a beautifully curated user experience. Allowing users to browse content through networks, series, and originals. Optimizing their own content library and suggesting content based on view counts.
The new beautiful Disney + is pretty much a Netflix rip-off. With the way, content is displayed to the interactive header image. It's kind of hard not to have a good user experience when you copy an industry leader. So, by default, Disney + is good.
Bad-Hulu’s historically bad interfaces, but then Disney aquired them.
Hulu has had some bad design decisions. From having CAPITALIZED TITLES that evoke the feeling of being yelled at, to vertical display. It is just plain confusing that Hulu's interface varies depending on what device you decide to stream from. Fortunately for Hulu no matter how bad a product’s UI is as long as the user can complete their goal of watching content the app is still usable.
Ugly-HBO Max … Sorry
At one point HBO had multiple apps and phases of rebranding HBO Go, HBO Now, then rebranded plain and simple HBO. Who can keep track of the constantly changing brand identity that is HBO? HBO Max was introduced when they gained the rights to stream Warner Bros content on their platforms. With a complete rebranding, the best the designers could come up with was….. Roku? HBO Max is reminiscent of Roku’s branding style with gradients and a very similar shade of purple. Why? Needless to say, HBO was doing too much and was overly complicated by having multiple applications that did the same thing.
Bonus: Factor of delight
Bonus: Look at this factor of delight integrated into Youtube tv! The status bar displays different images, during the premiere or special showing of a broadcast. A rose for The Bachelor. A shark fin for shark week. So delightful!
We are all users
Now that streaming platforms have been around for more than a decade users know immediately when they are having a bad experience. With streaming platforms being the most common way movies and shows are watched. We have all had some frustrating experiences. Can you recall any good, bad, or ugly experiences you’ve had with streaming platforms?