Netflix Watch Party | UX/UI Case Study
By: Carrie Liu
Tags: UX Design, Case Study, Netflix

Introduction

Overview

Netflix Watch Party is a feature within Netflix that allows people to watch movies and shows together while being able to chat and interact during the stream. I worked on this project collaboratively with two of my General Assembly teammates, Dasha and David. This was an educational project for General Assembly, and is not directly associated with Netflix.

Role: UX/UI Designer

Team: Dasha Maliarevska and David Kolomiyets

Timeline: 2 weeks

Tools: Figma, Lucidchart, Monday, Zoom, Google Slides

Problem

Although Netflix remains one of the most popular streaming services across the world and continues to dominate the streaming market to date, there is a critical flaw that has been exposed by the lockdown of COVID — no real way to watch movies or shows as a distributed group. Netflix Watch Party has attempted to fix the problem.

Target Users

Netflix Watch Party was carefully designed to connect strangers and friends to watch movies together while curating the feeling of a real distributed interactive setting. It not only provides video telephony and online chat for people to interact while watching a show or movie, but it also features a profile page of the user and their host rating to allow people to see how well they engage in a group setting.

Research Process

Interviews

Because we wanted to get familiar with the current users of Netflix, we conducted 15 user interviews and found that many people enjoy watching Netflix by themselves and with friends. Their main needs were to be in a cozy environment with people that they feel comfortable with and to have a site where everyone can access. We asked three main questions to see what a good watch setting was like:

How do you socialize with people or friends when you’re not in person?

Have you ever had an online activity or party with friends?

What was successful and unsuccessful about it?

Though many of my interviewees have no problem socializing with people through technology, I found some insightful quotes that stood out to me:

“ I usually text or FaceTime my friends when I miss them.”

“ I use platforms such as zoom and Skype to host group meetings”

“ We tried to keep the video on but you would hear each other’s movies play.”

It appeared that many of my target users had concerns about different technology platforms simultaneously playing, which interfered with the overall movie experience.

Affinity Mapping

Through our collective affinity mapping and user interviews, we condensed our insights into eight main categories: Group Watch Preferences, Frustrations, Expectations, Helpful Features, Device Preferences, Time Spent Watching Netflix, What It Means to Watch in a Group Setting, and Other Apps Preferences. The affinity map also led us to see some key patterns:

People want an easy and concise navigation system for watching movies

Watching movies on a bigger screen is more comfortable than watching movies on a phone or iPad

People watch movies together so they can socialize and exchange comments and reactions

People enjoy watching movies without any interruptions

These insights led me to formulate some key questions:

How might we…

create a watch party with friends that feels like a real movie experience?

allow people to interact and communicate with friends while watching a movie?

create a universal platform that can allow friends and strangers to join?

introduce a new feature on Netflix without disrupting the overall system?

User Persona

By extracting the key insights from our interviews and affinity map, we created our ideal user persona. His name is Raphael, and he is a 25 year old model, who enjoys the company of his friends and loves watching movies and TV shows. In our User Persona, we also added an audio recording of one of our interviewees that represents the feeling of our persona when watching a movie together with friends. This showcased and emphasized the emotional depth we wanted our users to feel while using the Watch Party feature.

Solution

Our main takeaway from the persona is that we need to deliver a feature on Netflix that allows people to stream movies with friends that is a recreation of a real movie theater experience.

Competitive/ Comparative Analysis

We made a C&C Analysis chart through researching multiple platforms of streaming services that are very successful. By comparing these streaming platforms, we got some useful insights on what features needed to be added into Netflix Watch Party. We also included Zoom and Skype as secondary competitors because these popular video telephony companies are super effective in allowing people to come together to talk and do activities online.

Design Process

After researching and synthesizing the problems, goals, and features, we started on ideating our design.

Site Map

For our information architecture, we wanted to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible so we followed the original Netflix’s site and added only the Watch Party feature on the homepage. The sub-headers underneath the Watch Party includes Profile, Friends, Public Board, and Messages.

User Flow

After organizing the site map, we formulated the user flow which has a happy path that shows the user creating a Watch Party with friends. The purpose of the user flow is to guide us when designing the wireframes.

Sketches

Next, we composed our low fidelity sketches. We brainstormed frames that showcased a Home, Profile, Invite Friends, and Video Screen. We each created our own sketches and consolidated all the successful parts into out final medium fidelity wireframes.

Mood Board

While creating the Mood Board, we wanted to stay true to the Netflix brand and color scheme of black and red. We included some of Netflix’s most watched shows to give a sense of authenticity and added subtle images of a cinema movie experience to provoke the feeling of watching a movie as a group.

Wireframes

This is only a quarter of all the wireframes that were made. These wireframes showcase the blueprint and layout of the website. We incorporated the Watch Party onto the Netflix homepage and added other sub-features within it. We went even further by designing the video screens and having subtle extensions such as a chat box, full or minimize screens, and accept or decline buttons.

Mid Fidelity Usability Testing

We gave users the task to create a Watch Party room and invite 3 friends to join them. Our usability scenario is:

You and your friends decide to watch a movie together. Take me through your thought process of navigating through the screens and create a watch party with three of your friends: Brittany, Nicole, and Arlo.

We tested 10 participants on the medium fidelity prototype using the following objectives:

Are the design layouts intuitive? What motivated you to click the options on the Watch Party page? How do you feel about the overall video streaming pages?

Finding/ Results

Through the first round of usability testing, we found that some users thought the main page of the Watch Party was confusing because it did not allow users to simultaneously invite friends and pick a movie. So for future iterations, we would simplify down the extra step and give the option to click both buttons in no specific order.

High Fidelity Prototype

With the findings from our mid-fidelity testing in mind, we moved forward to create our high fidelity prototype by incorporating the brand standards to the UI design.

You can access our prototype here

Next Steps

After finishing up some usability testings for the high fidelity prototype, we came up with some goals we’d like to work on for the future:

Conduct more usability test to get more insights on our new watch party feature

Add more functional features on the watch party screen such as public discussion board

Add a mute button to allow audience to not hear background noise or get distracted from movie

Reflection

This was my first UX design group project, and it was a very memorable and enjoyable experience working with my team. Throughout the project, I’ve learned that feedback and testing are incredibly crucial when we we are in the design process. Exchanging ideas and understanding my teammates’ perspectives are also really important factors in achieving the results we wanted. I’m excited to apply the knowledge that I’ve gained on this project to my future works.