Project type: End-to-end desktop redesign
Role: Product Designer
Industry: Entertainment
Tools: Figma & Figjam
Duration: Q3 2024
The Problem
The current Apple TV+ interface requires users to click into a title to access basic information such as a brief synopsis, cast details, and a play button. Trailers are only available by scrolling down, and no ratings are provided within the interface. This fragmented experience forces users to navigate multiple steps to gather essential details, often leading them to external sources for reviews and previews. The lack of a streamlined and informative content discovery process can hinder user engagement and decision-making.
Discover
Competitive Analysis
The analysis reveals that while streaming platforms excel in intuitive navigation, personalized recommendations, and visually engaging designs, they struggle with consistency, clutter, and accessibility. Strengths include clear categorization, hover previews with useful details, and strong contrast for readability. However, weaknesses like ambiguous recommendations, inconsistent layouts, excessive spacing, and distracting hover effects hinder usability and user engagement.
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Peacock: Website header has popular categories that follow the user as they scroll.
Hulu: Website header includes relevant categories, with the first three personalized based on past searches.
Netflix: Categories are engaging, tailored to past searches, and uniquely personalized for each user.
Amazon Prime: Website header features popular categories that remain visible as users scroll.
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Peacock: Hovering over content reveals the title, number of seasons, genre, and Rotten Tomatoes rating in a clean, organized layout.
Netflix: Hovering over content expands the image into a movie clip and displays match rating, duration, general audience rating, and three descriptive adjectives, creating an informative and visually engaging card.
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Peacock: Strong contrast with a black background.
Netflix: High contrast with a black background.
Amazon Prime: Good contrast with a black background.
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Peacock: Categories are weak and don’t engage users; WWE as a header category is irrelevant to most users.
Hulu: Website header disappears while scrolling, and the “Hubs” category is ambiguous even when opened.
Amazon Prime: The first category is unlabeled, making it unclear whether rankings are based on past searches, all users, or another algorithm.
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Peacock: Narrow spacing makes the interface feel cluttered.
Netflix: Images are placed too closely together, creating a cluttered look.
Amazon Prime: Content sizing varies, leading to a lack of uniformity and organization.
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Peacock: Hovering only displays genre and season/year, offering minimal value.
Hulu: Hovering displays a sideways arrow, which is confusing and uninformative.
Netflix: Hovering automatically plays a movie clip but provides no synopsis or essential information.
Amazon Prime: Hovering requires scrolling to see the full details of a show or movie.
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Peacock: Clicking on a title prioritizes “You May Also Like” recommendations over details about the selected show/movie.
Hulu: Clicking on a title provides only general audience rating, length, and genre, with no preview options.
Netflix: The “Netflix Match” system is ambiguous, leaving users unsure how recommendations are generated.
Amazon Prime: Categories do not personalize content based on users’ previous searches.
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Peacock: Clicking into a show/movie immediately displays recommendations instead of information about the selection.
Netflix: Expanding content on hover can be distracting and disrupts the browsing experience.
Amazon Prime: Multiple hero images throughout the homepage highlight newly released Amazon content, making the interface feel overwhelming.
User Interviews
The interview questions were designed to understand users’ streaming habits, frustrations, and preferences. I aimed to gather insights on their navigation experience, pain points, content discovery process, platform preferences, and specific feedback on Apple TV. This information will help me identify the “need” within streaming services and find solutions to improve the streaming experience.
“Add ratings/reviews within streaming platforms instead of needing to go to external sites like IMDb.”
Katrien
“I prefer not to see reviews beforehand. What draws me in is the image and trailer, that 5 to 20 second window determines whether I want to watch it or not.”
Clemente
“I find Netflix’s hover state obnoxious because it automatically plays content no matter where you stop.”
Amy
Define
Analyzing User Interviews
Reviews and Preferences
Users prefer making quick decisions based on images and trailers, with some checking reviews afterward or before movies. Many want ratings and reviews integrated into the streaming platform, with links to IMDb for more details.
Personalized Algorithm
Users want a more accurate algorithm for recommendations, with suggestions based on past searches and compatibility, such as similar shows or movies featuring the main actor. They appreciate personalized “Top 10” lists and related content.
Navigation
Users find Netflix cluttered and often skip suggestions. They prefer browsing new releases or genres and want more customization, like a personalizable toolbar. There’s a desire for consistent category labeling and a cleaner interface similar to Apple TV’s.
Hover State
Users prefer to click and choose when to play a clip instead of it autoplaying while hovering. The constant autoplay on Netflix is especially frustrating.
From these interviews, I learned that users desire a more personalized content experience with recommendations tailored to their preferences. While they appreciate the hover preview feature, they prefer the option to click to play rather than having it autoplay. Users also want navigation to be easier with cleaner interfaces, and they prefer having reviews and ratings directly on the platform instead of relying on external sites like IMDb. This analysis has given me a better understanding of users’ experiences, needs, and perspectives, helping me envision how streaming services can be improved. I was surprised to learn that hover states were not well-received, as they take away user control, which I hadn’t considered before.
User Personas
UX personas help me understand users’ goals, motivations, and frustrations in relation to the product. For this project, the target users are everyday people from diverse economic backgrounds who value convenience and ease of use in streaming services. They seek quick access to content and a seamless experience that caters to their preferences. Creating these personas ensures the design aligns with their expectations and provides an effortless, enjoyable experience.
Project Goals
These project goals focus on enhancing the user experience by making the streaming service easy to navigate, personalized to individual preferences, and efficient in content discovery. They highlight the need for a seamless, intuitive interface that boosts engagement, improves retention, and supports robust search and filtering capabilities.
POV and HMW Questions
Framing the design challenges in this way helps guide the design process and inspires creative solutions. These challenges highlight the need for a personalized experience for each viewer, where content, including reviews, synopsis, ratings, and previews, is displayed on one easy-to-view screen without overwhelming the user.
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How might we streamline the content search experience to keep users from leaving streaming services to search for information about shows or movies?
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How might we provide sufficient information during content searches without overwhelming users, considering many are frustrated by irrelevant content displays?
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How might we enhance the personalization of content categories to better attract users, given their frustration with irrelevant automatic recommendations?
Feature Set
Core functionalities that stand out aim to enhance personalization and user engagement by displaying detailed content information on hover, offering show previews upon clicking, showing IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings and tailoring categories to past searches,
User flow
The user flow starts with signing in, selecting a title, and viewing an overlay that provides all essential information to help users decide whether they want to watch the content.
Low-fidelity wireframe
The low-fidelity wireframe enhances usability by introducing an overlay that appears when hovering, with a synopsis, trailer, reviews, and a streamlined play option, aligning with insights from user interviews and the ideation phase of this project.
Develop
User testing
Method
User testing was conducted in person using iPads to interact with low-fidelity wireframes designed to enhance Apple TV+’s user experience. Five participants, aged 22–37, with prior streaming service experience, were selected to evaluate usability and navigation, focusing on accessing content information and playing selections.
Summary
Participants tested the interface to determine their preferences for discovering and selecting content. The primary goal was to assess ease of use and efficiency in accessing essential details like synopses, reviews, and trailers.
Results
Users preferred clicking on content to access additional information rather than using hover states, as it provided a greater sense of control. They also favored having reviews and synopses readily available within the interface, reducing the need for external searches. Based on this feedback, the hover functionality will be replaced with a click action to create a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.
