This is my first time to write the case study with English on Medium. The main purpose of the article is to practice my English writing. Here, I still think the design process should be evaluated more rigorously. Thanks for reading! I hope I can keep improving my English and professional skills in my life journey. If there are some problems, no matter what the passage presents (e.g., design process, the style of expression), please give your opinions without any hesitation!
In the case of streaming media, Netflix has become a well-known platform surrounding our daily lives. With the growing number of international subscribers, it is important that the company should create more user-friendly and holistic functions, especially for the playback experience, based on different cultural needs. In the following passage, I will investigate the structure of the current playback system on Netflix and provide ideas to enhance the playback experience.
Netflix Profile
Netflix, which first offered a DVD-by-mail service, was founded in 1997 in the United States. In 2007, the company launched its streaming service, which allowed users to watch films, TV series, and documentaries through the Internet. It also began to transform its main business of DVD-by-mail service into the business of online streaming. Since 2010, it has expanded the online service to the international market. Six years laters, the number of Netflix subscribers in the international market first surpassed the number of their U.S. subscribers.
Currently, Netflix is the world’s leading streaming entertainment service with over 167 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries, and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. — Netflix Media Center
The Problem
Bingewatchers and language learners usually use Netflix as a medium to learn foreign languages. Watching series with subtitles is helpful in understanding some contents of conversations in series. Even though Netflix has already launched the feature of subtitles in the player, the function still has annoyed ones who want to enjoy series and learn English. Since people sometimes don’t understand the meaning with the subtitles, they usually replay the part which they are confused about and switch the foreign subtitle into their native language to figure out the content. However, people would lose patience in adjusting the subtitles back and forth between their native language and the foreign language. As a result, improving the feature of subtitles is important for this target group.
Validating The Problem
Social Media
Thanks to social media platforms, I can conveniently conduct a little survey on Instagram. Initially, I posted a story on Instagram and asked my peers about their satisfaction and opinions of playback experience on Netflix. Based on the result, it shows that about thirty percent of people think the playback experience should be improved while they are watching movies. From the opinions, users also gave us concrete pain points.
“1. The subtitle cannot adjust if I watch on TV. 2. Netflix should add dual titles 3. The company should add the setting which allows users to control if they want to go to next episode automatically.” --- User A
“Control the playback speed” --- User B
“Customize playback speed, close the function that automatically go to the next episode, launch the setting of dual titles, and rating the videos” --- User C
Therefore, in the cases of my peers, we can see that Netflix users have their expectation on improvement of playback experience.
App Store
To understand more users’ opinions, I also consider other Taiwanese users opinions in the App Store. Still, users still look forward to adding these functions.
“Hope that the dual subtitles (English/Chinese) can be showed at the same time to learn English. Quickly clicking the right/left side of the screens can play quicker/slower while watching series. Even more, the company can add the ranking about hot movies/series.” --- Commenter 1
“Look forward to adding functions of dual titles, of fast-forwarding, and of playback speed….” --- Commenter 2
From the above research, I categorize users’ pain points into two groups.
- Non-English native speakers hope to improve the function of subtitles to facilitate them to learn English while using Netflix.
- The users think that they need the function to fast-forward, rewind, or control playback speed while watching on Netflix.
Solution
Since this research place greater emphasis on subtitles, I focus on the first point, which I listed above and investigate the function of subtitles on Netflix. In fact, Netflix has launched the function of adjusting the playback’s subtitle for users, but this function hides in a link which might be hard for the users to find.
I am going to integrate these existed function (font, outlook, and text Size) into the playback interface, so I add another speaker icon in the playback system to differentiate the original audio and subtitle settings.
The audio setting demonstrates available spoken language in the series, and the subtitles setting provides functions of dual subtitles, font, shadow, and text size. While a user clicks the subtitles icon, the system displays the current user's setting. The user can choose the items on the list if he or she wants to make some changes, then the right side of the set list shows the different options for him or her to set up. The below section is the example to understand the process that one user changes the setting.
Conclusions
I present an idea of updating Netflix’s playback experience. Users can set up dual-subtitles that help language learners to learn English while watching series on Netflix. The new idea also integrates the original functions, which allowed users to adjust the font, the sizes, and the outlook of the subtitles. It reduces the users’ steps to change the setting.
In the future, I hope to test my prototypes in the user study with real users. Without proven statistical data, it is usually hard for us to see insightful results. Also, during the design process, I think that some issues should be considered deeply.
For example:
- The icon design on the playback system could be designed further
- The information architecture of subtitles setting should be evaluated by users to make sure the structure fits to their requirement and priority.
Overall, I look forward to delving into the issues of movie/series subtitles to help more users adapt to Netflix's family.
