Twitch: an entirely new way to interact for streamers and viewers (part 1)

A new Twitch mobile app feature that mixes physical activity and entertainment.

A-Train Alarm

Hello, there! Here we go again, another Ironhack project — this time, we had to create a new feature for an app of our liking as an individual project.

INTRODUCTION

The challenge

I have to say I was very hesitant as on which project should I choose! I wanted to do something impactful, but straightforward enough to be effective. I explored different apps I often use, like Instagram, Twitch, or Youtube, as well as others like Facebook (Meta) or Tiktok. While looking at them, a thought crossed my mind. Twitch doesn’t have a tool that many apps and services already include — users cannot track the hours they spend watching content in Twitch. So I decided to work on that!

I divided this Case Study into two parts:

1st part:

UX

• Research
• Iteration
• Health benefits: exercise vs. NEAT
• Last steps before UI

2nd part:

UI

• Streamer POV
• Viewer POV
• Alarm settings

Next Steps

UX

Once I was clear about what I wanted to focus on, I developed the first draft of the project: a screen that keeps track of your time on Twitch. I also thought I could add in some sort of personal alarm (as a friendly reminder) that would pop up after a certain time had elapsed while watching Twitch. This idea felt impactful, necessary, and straightforward. However, it seemed kinda plain, so I wanted to iterate on that. I thought of including exercises or activities to do when the alarm popped. Thus, it was time to research and test this idea to see if it could work.

RESEARCH

I use my computer a lot. I spend around 10 hours a day in front of the screen, including my mobile phone. This is a lot of time. I am working hard for this Ironhack Bootcamp right now; so this amount of time in front of my computer is OK, but I love to exercise. Thankfully, I live in a nice, little home in the countryside. I don’t want to spend 10–12 hours in front of my computer uninterruptedly every day. Eventually, my muscle mass would decrease, and I would end up living a sedentary lifestyle.

However, I’m loving my work as a designer, meaning that all the long hours of work in front of the computer cannot be avoided. I know for a fact that I could work for an entire day without getting up from my chair in order to finish a project I’m passionate about. That’s why I wanted some kind of alert that reminded me to engage in mild exercise and physical activity, even if it is only for a short while.

The problem is that whenever I tried to combine this idea with the sense of community and fun by which Twitch is characterized, it wouldn’t quite fit. None of the people I spoke to were keen to the thought of putting a momentary stop to their leisure. It is understandable. Who wants to be interrupted in the middle of a stream and get reminded to exercise? Who wants to be pulled out from the community experience while triggering FOMO for the lack of some precious live moment? No one wants that. So, again, I iterated on the idea.

ITERATION

I’ve always loved joking. People who know me personally would clearly define me as a prankster. Many of you will think that I’m exaggerating, but it can be really bothering. An active part of my brain is permanently thinking about new dad jokes, witty occurrences, and word plays, and I have to hold myself from saying all of those out loud. This isn’t as bad as it seems, since this part of my brain always tries to make projects entertaining, and easy to use, see, or play with. So, for the iteration, I applied this mentality to the project. What’s the most fun aspect of Twitch? Interactions and sense of community.

The fact that you can see a streamer doing whatever they want and talk and spam emotes about it with them and other users makes Twitch an excellent platform to interact with people that share your same hobbies. Even so, applying this interaction trait within the tracking time and alarm idea is no easy task.

With that in mind, I continued my research by interviewing streamers (mainly friends who have been streaming for years now) and active Twitch users. I discovered that interaction is indeed second only after pure entertainment as the top reasons people use Twitch. Note that streamers were more emphatic about the importance of interactions, but viewers also shared this feeling.

Another main source of information that I found was this AMAZING study in which 603 Twitch users took part. It includes lots of helpful data to understand how and why Twitch works. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend reading the full paper.

The discussion from the study backed up my previous research. I was excited! Still, I could extract valuable information from it for my new Twitch feature idea. Regardless of total time elapsed watching streams, the most voted reason for using Twitch was “to be entertained.” Socialization was less important to that extent. But wait, here comes the exciting part! The study states that the more time users spend on Twitch, the more they care about socialization. So, adding a strong sense of community component to my alarm made sense since it would pop up after some time, not right away. Viewers who spend a lot of time on Twitch would have another interaction and community tool, and, since many of them are spending long hours in the chair watching or hearing streams, they would benefit from the motivation to exercise provided by the alarm.

What will this “strong sense of community component” be? I kept thinking and researching on that, and finally, I got the answer. Instead of a personal reminder, I should develop an alarm for the community — a challenge for everyone participating in the stream.

Isn’t it perfect?! Both streamers and their communities can do any physical activity at the same time. Viewers would encourage the streamer to exercise, and vice versa. Physical activity can become fun and entertaining, and would strengthen the viewer-streamer bond. Not to mention all the health benefits from exercise: it improves mood, reduces stress, combats health conditions… What else?

Also, this idea fits perfectly within Twitch Events, a feature already included in the platform which allows streamers to interact with their audience in live streamings. The Hype Train (more on this below) is one example of such events.

Now the idea is clearly set, it is time to work on its implementation.

HEALTH BENEFITS: EXERCISE VS. NEAT

Here comes the technical part where I explain the differences between exercise and NEAT. As a nutritionist and health professional, I believe I should make a distinction between both expressions.

To calculate the energy consumed during your day, it can be divided among four categories:

• Basal metabolism: the energy your body uses to stay alive. It takes the majority of our energy (50–70% energy consumption).
• NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Training): this includes activities such as walking or riding a bike instead of driving towards a destination, walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. In these cases, the former choices are NEAT (20–30% energy consumption).
• Exercise: this defines planned exercises. The energy consumption depends on the workout (10–15% energy consumption).
• Diet thermogenesis: energy consumed by our body to process food (5–8% energy consumption).

Total Calorie Consumption — Foodspring

Energy consumption regarding NEAT is the most underrated one. Keeping a high level of NEAT is incredibly powerful in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and lose weight. Everyone should strive to keep it as high as possible!

For this feature, we will focus on NEAT rather on exercise. Adding short sets of easy physical activities every now and then can be an excellent way to improve your general health in the long term.

LAST STEPS BEFORE UI

The Hype Train

The feature should fit as smoothly as possible within the Twitch user flow, and merge seamlessly within the original Twitch mobile app. In order to achieve this, I based the UI on the Twitch feature I mentioned previously: the Hype Train.

As per Twitch standards, the Hype Train is an “event.” It activates when many users start donating Bits (Twitch currency) or money, subscribing to the streamer, or gifting subscriptions to other users.

Whenever people do one of these actions, they fill up a container. If users fill the Hype Train in less than 5 minutes, they will complete a level, and the next level starts. The more levels they fill, the more rewards all donors get at the end of the Hype Train. Prizes include notifications with your name on general chat thanking you for the support to the stream, badges, and emotes that can be used afterward in the stream chat. Of course, the streamer usually greets all donors, which is also nice!

Hype Train count meter

Hype Train prizes

My alarm emulates two aspects of this Hype Train event:

• The UI
• The badges and emotes given to reward viewer interaction

A-Train levels

Let’s consider how levels should be filled within our feature. In the Hype Train, levels are filled when users make donations. How should the A-Train be filled? As per now, levels will fill up considering the percentage of people doing the activity. Note that this is a preliminary idea that can be further improved in the future. When the A-Train progress bar has been completely filled, participating users will receive maximum prizes depending on the levels filled.

A-Train movement detection

How can Twitch know who performed any sort of activity while watching the stream? Since the A-Train is conceived as a mobile app feature, the idea is, therefore, to use the motion sensor from the mobile device (i.e., the accelerometer), which detects acceleration and gravity. To detect the activity, users have to grab their phones while doing the respective A-Train exercise. It’s as simple as that.

Should the web version from Twitch include this feature in the future, the solution would be syncing the web browser version of A-Train to the mobile account and performing the physical activity while grabbing the mobile phone as usual. A smartwatch app should be considered as well in this regard.

A-Train activities and time between alarms

I created different activities for the A-Train alarm to control the type and the number of exercises. The exercises included are the following:

• Squads
• Desk push-ups
• Dips
• Arm pulses
• Arm Circles
• Pretend Jump-rope
• Wall sits
• Lunge
• Seated Bicycle Crunches
• Mix it up! (When selecting this, exercises will be rotated)

The streamer would set the number of repetitions or the time for each activity.

There is only one problem, though — what if the streamer or viewer doesn’t know how to perform one of these exercises? We know Twitch has additional pages explaining some of their content (feel free to explore those):

• A website describing the brand: https://brand.twitch.tv
• A website showcasing their emotes: https://twitchemotes.com
• A website explaining what Twitch actually is: https://www.twitch.tv/p/en/about/

The solution would be to add another web page describing A-Train and the exercises. Easy-peasy!

Note that alarms will pop up once every 1, 2, or 3 hours. I’m afraid that creating an option that would make the alarm pop up in less time or letting streamers set up their own times would make the feature too spammable and lead to a misuse of the A-Train.

Naming

Regarding the name, I chose “A-Train” for two main reasons:

• I found out that A-Train is an idiom in English used to define an increased boost in productivity. This fits perfectly for our tool since doing more exercise and NEAT increases overall productivity.
• Twitch already has the Hype Train event, which our feature is based upon.

Now that I’ve explained the theoretical part, I created three prototypes to complete the whole feature cycle:

With that in mind, I made three prototypes to complete the entire feature cycle:

• Streamer’s point of view (POV)
• Viewer’s POV
• Alarm settings

This was all for the UX part.

This is Vins Rubio; thank you for reading this article. Stay tuned for part 2 with all the UI!