Week 3-Netflix-Feature
To find movies without knowing the name of the film
The 3rd week of the Bootcamp has already finished, here is the 3rd project. This time I worked on my own, had 4 days for it and went through a good learning process. The design was for an Android phone and the Brief was already given.
The task
Add a “tag research feature”: To find a movie you forgot the name of (or don’t know the name) and the app finds everything that can correspond to your research.
The motivation
As the brief was already leading to a direction, it was my motivation to focus on the design principles of Netflix. The feature should help to find movies for the user when they maybe forget a name or don´t know exactly what they want to watch but they have an idea of what the movie should be like. Additionally, to that, it was also needed to validate if the feature is needed from the users.
Empathize
I start the design thinking process by emphasizing. This means in this case to figure out what the given app looks like and what could be some design principles of Netflix. Therefore I figured out 3 principles Netflix follows up.
- This is, it should always be “simple and easy to follow” with no distractions and steps are shown step by step.
- They follow up to personal, so users can like movies after watching them, they create lists and Netflix shows movies that match with previous watches.
- Netflix always experiments as well and they need to stay up to date. They add and skip features and ask customers always specific questions to improve the app according to their wishes.
To emphasize with the user I surveyed with 20 responses and got interesting answers which helped me not only figure out if the feature is a wish to apply but also how is the search behaviour of the users.
- What are they searching for
- If they are satisfied with Netflix search options
- What do they wish from Netflix to find movies to watch.
The result was interestingly 50% answered that they would not need a feature to find movies where they forgot the name. 60% want to have more filter options and 76.2% try new movies often. I summarized the results in an Affinity Map.
For a better understanding, I created “How might we” questions . According to the research and what the users want, I focused on offering better filter options for the Netflix feature.
How might we offer more filter options to Netflix users?
How might we get better results while searching for movies without a specific name?
Additionally, to that, I made 3 Interviews with Netflix users to understand their usage in more detail. Results got sorted in an Emphazie Map, to have a better understanding of the user's needs and why they want or need certain things. Before I defined the User persona and the User journey map I also made a competitive analysis with the two apps most people use alternatively to Netflix. These are Disney plus and Amazon prime video. This helps to figure out what is already given on the market and figure out if what these apps have should be used for the Netflix feature or if tasks can already get outdated.
The most interesting findings were that none of these apps has an option to set detailed filters nor the option to combine the search input with some filter option. But at least in all of the apps, the user has the option to not only search for the title they also show results for actor's search, genres or topics like e.g. second world war. More of the findings are shown in the table below
User Persona
I used all the results of the research and interviews to create the user persona “Alex”. He is a 30-year-old doctor living in Cologne. He loves watching movies “Even the categories are not perfect on Netflix I prefer it compare to other Platforms” is his point of view. So he has some problem with the app when it comes to searching some movies when he doesn´t know the exact title. He wishes that there are more filter options on Netflix to find new movies and as well movies with forgotten titles. In the Persona template, more information can be found about Alex.
In the user journey, Alex comes home from a long day of work. As he is a Psychologist he talks a lot during the day and he is looking forward to a quiet evening. He has some idea in his mind but doesn´t know a title covering the topics and actors. He switches on Netflix and starts searching, but the options are not detailed enough. He gets really annoyed because he cannot find anything to watch. He uses google and finally finds something to watch. But he wishes to immediately have this option on Netflix. Therefore comes the opportunity for this project to apply more filter options to Netflix. Here is Alex's Journey Map.
Problem Statement and Hypothesis Statement
The understanding of the user has led me to the Problem Statement
“The Netflix feature is designed to achieve the goal to give more filter options to the user for the search process. We have observed that the service is not meeting with the goal to find movies without knowing the titles name which is causing longer search processes by using other Apps.”
and I defined the following Hypothesis Statement
How might we improve Netflix in the way our users are more successful based on their search results?”
Information Architecture
The next step was to understand the structure of the app in order to see how this new feature might be incorporated into its current architecture as intuitively as possible. Therefore I built a sitemap of Netflix. It shows all the pages the app offers. The sites which are building the feature are shown green in the sitemap.
After that, the user flow got built. It shows of course the flow for the feature to give more detailed search options and will help orientate on the design phase. The result of the research was people want more options to search for movies. In the flow, there are some decisions the user needs to make (the green round field) and when the user sets the filter, he gives some input to the app as one can see blue input fields.
Ideating Ideas
In the next step, things are getting more concrete. I created different Ideas to solve the user's Problem about finding suitable movies and their wish to have more filter options so that they can try new movies without switching to another platform. Here is the sketch of the idea.
Mid Fi
I created a Mid-Fi user flow to figure out if the search process is understandable for the user.
Testing
To avoid misclicks and keep the flow as user friendly as possible I sent the Mid-Fi out to get it tested. The test result showed that many misclicks happen at the homepage because they couldn´t find the search button. It is really small at the top of the site. I iterated this part of the design as a result of this feedback. Overall, I got feedback that the flow is understandable which leads me to the High-Fi.
High-Fi
For the High-Fi I created a Design System. Netflix colours are used, it includes icon and image libraries, a container and a menu bar with Auto Layouts. As is shown in the images below.
In the High Fidelity flow is the whole search process shown with. The Homepage changed with a new search bar in the middle and the second site for the search decision got a more suitable design according to Netflix design principles. In the following is the video of the High-Fi. As the results from the research showed me that 60% of Netflix users want to have more filter options and 76% love to watch new movies I implanted for the feature a more detailed filter. The user can apply different filter categories from actors, content, Era, categories, producer and genre. Afterwards, users get shown movies that match the most with the search and also in the different filter options.
Reflections
The next steps of the project are to optimize the search process by shortening the user flow and having fewer steps to follow. It can be also focused on how to apply not only movies but also series or how to combine these searches.
For the first time, I used the design system and the auto layout which I really enjoyed because it gives a good structure for working and helps a lot to be efficient in the design process.
Thank you for your interest in the project I hope you enjoy reading it.
I´m excited to continue with the next project in the 4th week of Iron Hack Bootcamp. Feel free to leave some comments. ✌️
Also a big thank you to all the interviewees and survey participants.
