Twitchi
By: Annie Xu
Tags: UX Research, UX Design, Design Process, Twitch, Streaming

Introduction

In recent years, Twitch has risen to become the largest live streaming platform in America with an average of 3.64 million monthly broadcasters in 2019. The rapid growth of Twitch has attracted a variety of streamers and viewers that connect through live streamed content. Many broadcasters on Twitch have turned streaming into a revenue source and have cultivated meaningful communities with their fans. On the platform, categories such as Just Chatting and Music have risen in popularity, but Twitch is best known for its video game livestreams.

Current Twitch browsing page

As a group, we had little understanding of the platform, so we conducted secondary research to guide our research proposal and further understand this emerging method of content creation.

Secondary Research

Successful streamers are entertaining and personal. Streaming is a performative art and streamers should uphold the most genuine but entertaining version of themselves to draw in viewers. As content creators, streamers should tell stories with their streams and allow their viewers to participate in that personal experience.

Twitch streamers can develop personal relationships with viewers that can continue to develop on other platforms. Streamers use various engagement methods such as reading donation messages and responding to chat to build connections. Small streams on Twitch cultivate these relationships by giving viewers and streamers more opportunity for direct interactions. Additionally, these connections can often extend beyond Twitch on other platforms such as Discord.

Example of a Discord server

There are negative side effects of Twitch. In some cases, unhealthy relationships can develop. Viewers might place too much reliance on streamers. Because viewers remain anonymous, they feel more comfortable disclosing personal troubles, which might place unwanted burden on streamers.

These insights provided our group with a foundation for the research study. With our secondary research in mind, we selected a direction to further pursue through interviews and other research methods. We were most interested in the communities of small streamers because of their ability to provide more opportunities for engaging and personal interactions. Our guiding research question was:

How do Twitch video game streamers create engagement and cultivate healthy communities?

With over 3 million streamers on the platform, there are seemingly endless streams to join and watch. We sought to understand what makes a streamer unique, how streamers attract viewers, and what keeps viewers coming back.

Primary Research

For our research, we focused on Twitch video game users to analyse how streamers generate engagement in their channels. We posted on Reddit asking for volunteers in the Twitch community to participate. In addition to Reddit, we recruited participants inside our family and friend circles. We interviewed Twitch streamers and viewers in order to get insights from both perspectives. In the end, we gathered a total of 16 participants, eight streamers and eight viewers. We created two interview guides for streamers and viewers with questions highlighting their stream experience. After the semi-structured questionnaire section of the interview process, we presented each participant with a card sorting exercise.

Similar to the interview guide, we created two different exercises for the streamers and viewers. The participants were asked to group and rank engagement methods. Viewers were prompted to rank these methods from least favorite to most favorite. The streamers had a similar exercise with the addition of grouping these methods into their frequency of use and effectiveness. Through this interview process, we aimed to better understand how relationships reside/exist in this platform and what keeps the audience engaged.

For this card sort, we asked streamers to group engagement methods into often used, sometimes used, rarely used, and never used.

After the interviews, we used Miro to sort relevant data into categories. We formulated three insights from the card sorting exercise:

Playing with viewers is effective for growth but the experience is hit or miss.

Streamers don’t always want to turn their camera on but it is effective for engagement.

Streamers enjoy engaging with chat and talking on stream.

Miro board with our insights

Relationships and Engagement

Examining opportunities for engagement and community building.

There’s a strong desire for growth but larger streams limit opportunities for engagement.

Content creators realize that direct engagement with viewers is important for maintaining viewership.

Viewers and streamers seek features that add unique value to the channel.

“[Emotes] gives me an exclusive feel and to most people that feels kind of special.” — Participant 5

Personality and Performance

Examining how streamers attract viewers through personality and content.

Viewers seek streamer personality types they vibe with.

Streamers can experience a tradeoff between doing what they enjoy and performing solely for the viewers.

“There’s all kinds of different streamers, and every viewer is different in what they want in their streamer.” — Participant 10

Growth and Promotion

Examining the difficulties of growth on Twitch and how content creators leverage other platforms.

Finding a niche amongst millions of creators helps differentiate streams and retain viewers.

Design Principles

With these insights in mind we generated three design principles we found important for our product to include.

Additive : Integrated and non-disruptive to existing communities.

Integrated and non-disruptive to existing communities. Playful: Fun in new exciting ways.

Fun in new exciting ways. Inclusive: Appropriate for all audiences.

Concept Generation

Our ideation process started with an in class activity where groups took turns brainstorming for each other’s design challenge. These quick ideation rounds taught us to design with spontaneity and allowed us to see how other designers were framing the issue. After the activity, our group came back and deliberated on concepts we were excited about. Our final concepts could be categorized into four different themes.

The first set of ideas introduced a physical and narrative element to increase engagement between streamer and viewers. Viewers showed admiration for features that add unique value to the stream and streamers realize that direct engagement is important for maintaining viewership. Twitch bar is an interactive character made by streamers that users can level up to earn gifts and accessories and unlock exclusive features. Twitch figure is a physical element that allows users to participate in streams in real time. These ideas aimed to strengthen connections between streamer and viewer.

Left: Twitch Bar. Right: Twitch Figure

The second set of ideas challenged the format and experience of current Twitch chat. In our research, participants reported that Twitch chat can become overwhelming, making direct engagement more difficult. We sought chat redesigns that would minimize those frustrations. Smaller streamers benefit from a cozy and small chat environment and we wanted to bring that positive experience into streams of all sizes. For e-sporting events where hype for the game and for your team is essential, we wanted to alter the Twitch chat to give fans more opportunities to cheer on their favorite team.

Left: Twitch Bar. Right: Twitch Figure

Our third set of ideas took inspiration from virtual and augmented reality. Our AR idea aimed to liven chat with augmented pop ups and emotes in order to bring the experience outside the boundaries of the screen. Knowing that streamers and viewers seek for opportunities of closer engagement, we also thought of creating a virtual reality of Twitch where viewers and streamers can get closer to the action even when they are far apart.

Left: AR Chat. Right: VR Experience

Our last idea uses measurable metrics such as heartbeat as a stream enhancement. We believed that this unique feature would help streamers and viewers have synchronous experiences during intense moments. This idea would be best suited for content such as horror game streams or speed runs.

Heartbeat Sensor

After conceptualizing these ideas, we had a round of critique with another group of designers. We wanted to know if our ideas seemed inclusive and feasible, or unnecessary and problematic. With their critique in mind, we made a list of pros and cons for each idea in order to down select.

The main concerns with our VR and AR vision was that the introduction of new complex platforms would have violated our design principle of being additive and non disruptive to current Twitch communities. This idea also focused more on comments and chat, but streaming is primarily about the game. Our chat solutions would have been too simple and wouldn’t have focused on enhancing closer relationships between streamers and viewers.

Our heartbeat display was an exciting idea, unfortunately we didn’t have enough use cases to accommodate larger audiences. Additionally, the idea has many technical limitations and privacy concerns.

In the end, we decided to combine the Twitch figure and Twitch bar ideas. Incorporating the customization elements from the Twitch bar idea such as equipment and accessories to the Twitch figure idea would make it more personal. Both ideas satisfied our playful design principle and the product would be additive to a community that enjoys figurine collectables. Our main concern was ensuring the product would be inclusive for a wide variety of audiences and not one that leaves average streamers or viewers behind. After receiving feedback regarding inclusion, we knew the product with its form and features needed to accommodate a rich streaming and viewing community.

Thus…Twitchi was born.

Introducing Twitchi

Twitchi- a cute, playful, and customizable figure

Twitchi, is designed to be a playful stream companion. It brings the Twitch viewing experience from a digital 2D space into a material 3D space. Twitchi provides a new dimension of interaction during the Twitch stream viewing experience. When designing Twitchi, we kept the accommodations of different communities in mind by making Twitchi customizable for different games, streamers, viewers, and communities.

Twitchi consists of three different parts: the base figure, changeable rings, and a wireless charging mat. For Twitchi’s base figure, we drew inspiration from existing collectables and the Twitch logo.

Breakdown of Twitchi components

Since there is a physical interaction aspect of Twitchi, we wanted Twitchi’s body to be ergonomic. Hence, we decided that it would be best for the entire figure to mimic a shape and style of the Twitch logo. The surface material of the figure would be firm but also soft, like silicone, for maximum comfort during interactions. The lights on the base of the figure would respond to both the viewer’s and streamer’s interactions with Twitchi.

Customize Twitchi with changeable rings from your favorite games and streamers

The changeable ring is where the customization aspect of Twitchi comes in. To better accommodate viewers’ interests and allow viewers to support their favorite streamers or games in different ways. Viewers can purchase different changeable rings for Twitchi. Changeable rings snap onto the base of the Twitchi figure and on the ring will be the viewers’ favorite video game characters and streamers. These rings would not only be collectable items for viewers, it would also provide different unique features on Twitch.