Netflix Rooms — Now chill remotely with your favorites.
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📝Problem Statement
As a product designer at Netflix, you’re tasked with designing a
feature where a group of people can watch their favorite movies/tv together.
The product manager believes that this feature would help create more engagement amongst existing users as well as be a method to acquire new customers who haven’t previously used streaming services.
Things to consider
- The solution may be a mobile app, web app, smart tv app, or any similar
method by which people currently stream movies and tv. (for sake of
the assignment choose one and stick with it) - Consider how someone’s group, choice of content, their device, their location, etc. will affect the experience.
- Time duration — 3.5 days.
Overview
Since covid-19 has started, people really miss hanging out together and doing stuff together. One such thing has been watching movies and TV shows with loved ones and friends.
Research
Scenario and Target Users
It is the time during the lockdown and Netflix wants to provide this feature to ease the scenario of doing stuff together though the growth is immense already.
There are two types of users
- Existing — Who have been using Netflix already.
- New users — Who do know about it but have not used it.
A thought on how it will help in the growth of Netflix❓
Providing ease to existing users with this new feature will initiate the growth conversion rate for new users too, with the demand and trend of watching together in a similar way people started playing Ludo, Valorant, PUBG, and other virtually connected activities.
Research for requirement gathering
After the starting of lockdown 🏡 it was true that people were missing being together and do stuff like watching movies together.
But…
Looking from the perspective of a user this feature is not a problem that has to be solved but an experience 😄 that can enhance the social-distanced activity with the joy of being together with something new in ease for them.
There can be a lot of experiences people like being together👨🏻👩🏻👩🏻🦰👲🏻👱🏻♂️
but to get the actual feelings and knowledge about the happenings.
I followed some steps to get the answers to Why?
- Gathering info 📒
I searched on blog posts, forums such as Quora to get an idea of the experience people has about the preferences of watching stuff together.
2. Discussion 📞with the OG’s
For this task, I instantly got some names in my mind to discuss and talked to 3 of my batchmates Anmol, Harsh, and Abhimanyu.
As all of them are hostellers 🏫 and with that experience of being in a company of doing everything in groups 🤼would be the best to get the insights from.
I started with an open discussion and didn’t wanted to ask specific questions at first as I wanted to know about their experiences and gather the specifications for understanding the pain points and the use cases📚📑.
Insights
From college days of watching movies together in the hostel and playing PUBG 🎮to being together now on Discord with everyone, I got to know about many aspects in between how things are.
Picking the unfiltered lines below:
By discussing and conversing I got the know the actual reasons why people like being with each other’s company creating memories💻📱🎬.
Based on the conversation the major statements I found:
3. Exploring the similar platforms 🎦
- Teleparty (formerly Netflix Party)
An extension to link up with friends and family to host long-distance movie and TV watch parties with sync, and chat options to interact with the people invited to the party on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Disney+. - Discord
A place where people can connect and spend time together with the power of channels within you can chat, share, even connect voice chat and stream anything you want. - Messenger Rooms
Facebook introduced rooms last year which have features of being in connection with people giving video chat, screen sharing, and watch together. - And many other platforms to get ideas.
Define
So based on the research and insights I got it is time to define the pain points and use cases around them.
- 🍿User wants to watch movies/TV shows together.
- 🎉A middle bridge to connect with people for the same.
- 🖇Want to connect and interact as well which is the power of this feature.
- 📲Discuss, explore, and decide what to watch together.
- 👋🏻Experience the joy of being together in a virtual mode.
- 🍻Most importantly experience the same “Netflix and Chill” with more people being in the same vibe.
Ideation
I started with exploring the solutions around the basic use cases to provide the experience of watching together and found out that the complete feature has sub-problem decisions that have to be thought around and divided the solution around two parts.
Introducing Rooms
Rooms are the medium user wants to connect and be in a virtual world with the restrictions of being social-distanced.
The Decisions involved
1. Control
The major decision while being in a group is who takes control?
But what are the controls over here in the room considering that everyone in the room knows each other and are thereby their decisions only then the decisions will be of everyone and not an individual which directed me towards the following solutions:
i. 📱📱📱Give everyone the control — The control to everyone provides the ability to make the controls in sync with everyone but problems that may arise are that there will be issues while doing the same thing like going back, pause, or even changing movies.
ii. 📱Control to one — Let one user define the changes and make decisions for everyone but this also may lead to problems of ownership and arrogance between individuals.
iii. 📳Introducing Remote — In similarity to the real world🌎 remote is a single entity which is controlled by only one but at the same moment when in a group it automatically behaves as a multi-service provider on behalf of everyone as Netflix Rooms conversations will support the process.
In contrast to typical Admin controls on different platforms such as WhatsApp, Messenger controls will be changed based on:
I. Sessions — Every time the first person who joins the room at first has the remote.
II. Flexibility — Control is not static and is changed every time the session is closed just like the real world can be given to another person too in the room.
2. Room specified 📺content
Netflix seen on the upfront is extremely easy to use with complete control for the user in various fields from content exploration, content recommendations, and listings for a single user but,
for the Rooms, there are various possibilities in the past, present as well as future.
i. 🍿Scenario for single user watching
I. Using Netflix could be a plan with a movie/TV series in mind what do you do in such a case? Add to My List
II. It could be that you just need to view the same now as you have the time what do you do at the moment? Start watching.
III. And again when you are finished watching but see something else interesting what do you do? Either add to My List or Start watching.
ii. 🍿🍿🍿Senario for group watching
Introducing Room Content List which provides the users in a room to add and create their personalized Group watching list giving a better experience which reduces the decision time as well as gives everyone participating in the room with/without even joining it works in all scenarios.
In similar way these scenario’s are common in exploration of the content while watching with a room which will be discussed further in Viewing UX
User flow of Rooms
Task flow and Wireframing for Rooms
Before joining the Room
There can be two states before joining the room which differentiates based on viewing in the room.
After joining the Room
Looking at the above states the follow-up conditions are that can be two views after joining the Rooms.
📽Viewing Experience
After discussing the Rooms and their functions here comes the point where the user will spend most of the time on being the major use case to watch movie/TV shows together.
🎦Exploring Content
We cannot deny that Netflix gives an awesome collection of the best content that cannot be found anywhere else ranging from award-winning Netflix Originals, TV shows, movies, documentaries, and more with the sweet essence of the best experience of streaming.
Keeping the same experience without reinventing the wheel for users exploring the content on the same platform was a major challenge that I found to solve.
I found out different solutions:
1. Introducing another explore
the section within the Rooms to explore through the same content on the HOME again in the Rooms.
2. Use the Room Content List
You can choose the content from the HOME -> Add to Room Lists -> Use the added content.
User Flow of Final Solution of Exploration of Content
1. Before Watching experience
This is the scenario where the user has joined the room and the use case of communicating and deciding what to watch comes into play.
2. While Watching experience
This experience has 3 views to provide the users the functionality of providing the best UX with multiple purposes.
3. After Watching experience
Looking at the after-watching scenario which appears in the picture when everyone is completed watching the movie/TV show of their choice following the before and while watching experience.
The users can:
- Come back to the state where everyone is connected.
- Can discuss the content they just finished watching.
- Simply choose, add to the Room list what they want to see next time and close the session.
- Close the session.
🧠Brainstorming and Iterations
🔮Future Scope
- Even though putting the efforts in understanding and designing on all the cases there can always be a scope of improvements which cannot be improved and uncovered without real users using the product.
- Adding scheduled screenings with notifications and reminders.
- On the basis of the usage data for the feature the initial trigger to open Rooms can be decided as well as given priority based on it.
I hope with the solution people can now remotely get connected📱 and will not miss the being together, also the Product Manager😄 is happy too!
