A Social Utility for TV/Movie Lovers

Project Manager, Product Designer & Researcher

Partner - Elliot Trotter: UX Designer, Content Strategist & Researcher

Finding something to watch these days can be really difficult. With the endless amount of content that exists and the various streaming platforms, how do you find your next favorite show to binge without endlessly scrolling?

RECS is a social tool that facilitates SVOD watching through interpersonal relationships. Users are more likely to select a video based on the connectivity of a personal relationship (friend, family, etc.) and RECS provides a platform to formalize that recommendation process and stop endless selection scrolling.

Trust (established relationships providing value) + Social Influence (how do I establish value) are the foundations and influences to what people watch.

User Persona: Meet Jess

Analysis on Competitors

We evaluated the existing competition by using their products and evaluating what we thought was working well and what could be improved. The apps we evaluated were Letterboxd & JustWatch.

Some of the negative things we found were that JustWatch had no social element to their app. It was strictly informative. Letterboxd is more focused in cinema and movies rather than TV shows and when you want to share a film with someone, it takes you out of the app and into options such as SMS, email or social media.

Our goal was to improve upon these weaknesses in our product. Now how are people sharing recommendations today?

• Social Media

• Message Boards/Blogs

• SMS Messaging

• In Person

• Virtually

• News Articles 

• Email Subscriptions

Next after doing some research, we surveyed close to 50 people, with ages ranging from 23-37. Here’s what we found from our research:

• 40 out of 45 people find recommendations valuable (also 40 prefer recs from friends over critics)

• 37 people discover things to watch or stream from friends. At the same time, 34 people also say they find things to watch from streaming services.

• 25 people use a service to help like Netflix’s ‘Add to Watch’ for tracking their own watchlist. 17 people make a list on their phone or a document file.

• Frequency of Streaming: 22 people said DAILY. 7 people said ALMOST DAILY which is a total of 29 that stream daily.
  
  

Some pain points we found from our research were:

• Fear the video will suck

• Too many options

• Takes too much time to search

• Time constraints 

• Don’t know where to look

• Depends on mood

• Agreeing with a partner

Solutions

• Friend-focused not community focus

• Direct recommendations to friends

• Short Tik-Tok style video reviews

Wireframes & Design

The goal is to design a product and pages that are simple and fun to use. The main dashboard will include displaying Friend Reviews, Recs For Me, & What’s New. The footer will include other pages found within the product such as a search function, home button, profile page, and the ability to send a rec (represented by the logo, the paper airplane icon). When someone is viewing information on a TV Show or Movie, they can learn basic details such as the film’s rating set by the Motion Picture Association, length of film, where they can watch it, and other valued information. They can also see which of their connections has published a review of it. A CTA button is also placed on the page inviting users to ‘Create A Review’ if they’ve seen it. Creating a Review is where the fun begins.

Users can choose to select a thumbs up or down icon to say if they liked it or not or even select a ‘meh’ neutral faced emoji to state that it was so so and they were left feeling okay after viewing. They can also select a star rating. Then we bring in the short Tik Tok like option to record a 2-3 minute or less video of yourself sharing your thoughts on what you thought about it to then send the video to someone or a group of individuals in your contact list. If the user doesn’t want to be on screen, they can choose to write down their thoughts or create a recorded audio clip of them talking about it.

Our goal is to be able to create a more social experience with sharing our favorite things to watch within our own network and thus in return, help stop endless scrolling when searching for what to watch. We think people know you best, not A.I. or some algorithm.

Project in Progress:

• Next step, test out prototype and apply feedback