Bringing friends together with Netflix. Integrating social functions into Netflix’s current design and branding.
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Adding social interaction to Netflix’s interface. A concept project.
Role: UX Researcher, UX Design, Interaction Design
Team: Anna Tran, D’niko Green
Timeline: 2 week Sprint
Tools: Figma, Google Suite, Notion
Netflix is the leading streaming service with over 220 million subscribers in 190 countries. Netflix has a vast library of shows and movies to watch with wonderful originals in both categories. Netflix continues to set the bar for other streaming services to follow, however they are lacking a social feature. This is where my team and I come in!
Netflix users don’t have a way to connect with their friends which can leave them feeling lonely in their streaming experience.
Create a way to bring social connections into the Netflix platform.
To start, my team and I looked at other streaming services. We conducted a competitive analysis to understand better what was already available and what actions and interactions you’re able to have with these social features. With this on our mind we conducted six user interviews.
In order to understand pain points and what our potential users would want out of this feature, we conducted two user interviews per team member. We wanted to find out about people’s social habits with their viewing experiences, if they have any experience watching with friends in different locations, if they watch content with live commenting, and any pain points associated with any of these things.
Chris is a 22 year recent college grad who has just moved to Los Angeles. He misses getting together with his friends to watch movies and sometimes TV shows.
Chris enjoys watching movies and tv shows with friends, but often struggles with bringing everyone together. He needs a way to connect with his friends that allows collaboration and interaction.
Once we had our mid-fi to a clickable state where you could walk through the flow, we sought out users to test our design. We managed to test the design with one user per team member. We went into the testing with two different scenarios we wanted to test, to provide insight into the different methods Chris might find a movie and start a watch party. We tested one user per team embe.
Find a movie and invite friends to start a watch party
Find a movie through a friend’s recommendation and start a watch party
Once we completed our usability testing we took our findings into the next iteration to make improvements on some shortcomings we found in the mid-fi.
For the hi-fi I took on a more specialized role of interaction designer. I focused on creating the buttons and interactions within them. I wanted to integrate our new features as seamlessly as possible into Netflix’s current design. I designed a way to include specified lists or recommending a movie within the current design of the add to list button. I also aimed to make the completion of a task clear through the buttons interactions to make it easier for Chris to figure out how to use this brand new feature
Howdy!
I’m RJ, a UX Designer based in the PNW. I have a background in management and the service industry, I bring much of what I have learned from those jobs into my current UX process.
As a leader I aim to create a space where people feel heard and supported so that they may be their best self. As a team member I always strive to do my best at my station to help achieve the collective goal as efficiently as possible.
I keep empathy at the core of everything I do from serving customers to leading staff to design.
“Intention equals retention”
Jared Truby owner of Cat & Cloud Coffee
