SIEGEL+GALE
Role
Principal UI/UX Designer
User Interviewer
Design Scope
UI/UX Design
Interaction Design
Timeline
June 2022 – August 2022
Collaborations
Creative Services, Design, Insights, Marketing, Naming, & Strategy
THE ASK
Identify user pain points and opportunities in the streaming platform landscape through user interviews and competitive research
Develop and propose a product that provides an answer to the content fragmentation of the streaming platform industry
Creating branding for the product under the revitalized Blockbuster brand
MY ROLE
During my summer 2022 internship at Siegel+Gale, I led the product design for a cross-collaborative intern project to model and present an aggregate streaming service product under the Blockbuster brand. My role as the Experience intern was to develop user interface prototypes in conversation with strategy and creative research. This project was led under the guidance of Jared Fink and Amy Chen.
How can we...
combat the fragmentation of streaming platform content across major players in the industry.
Our Research
Our Process
After getting to know each other within the intern team and our various roles, we set out a plan that focused on market and design research for what this potential product could look like. We would then transition into synthesizing our insights into design explorations that would lead to the final product proposal.
experience mapping of multi-platform streaming users
Competitive Market Analysis, User Interviews & Survey
We conducted competitive market research of the streaming platform industry to better understand the positioning for Blockbuster’s potential offering, while user interviews were conducted to better understand the current streaming experience, as well as a nationwide survey of 137 respondents.
Findings
We synthesized findings from our surveys and interviews that capture user sentiment that inform us of the problems to solve.
46%
of viewers say that the increase in streaming services makes it challenging to find the content they’re looking for.
64%
of viewers say they would prefer a bundled streaming service that would allow them to choose as few or as many streaming services as they wanted.
58%
of streaming service subscribers have over 3 subscriptions or more, previously being only 32% in 2019.
User frustrations and whitespace on the market
After concluding that an overly dispersed market has not only burdened users’ experientially and financially, we showed there was whitespace for Blockbuster to create a unique identity as an aggregator streaming service that could solve these frustrations and disrupt the conventional paradigms of exclusivity and value that characterize conventional streaming platforms.
positioning of major streaming platforms for analysis of market white space
Gathering insights
We synthesized key experiences captured by our 20+ interviews and organized them across different swim lanes detailing the content discovery process on streaming platforms, organizing them by an overarching process found across all users’ experiences—an initial motivation to watch content, search & weigh-in processes to discover content and then decide to invest in it, and finally an outcome (deciding which content to watch or not).
experience mapping of multi-platform streaming users
Mapping user journey
I distilled this map of data into a concentrated journey map of a single conceptual user showing the positive and negative moments in the streaming experience.
journey map of standard user and opportunites found across journey
Actionable design problems
Below are actionable design issues distilled from our avenues of research. Based on our interviews, users face the issue of needing several pricey subscriptions to access their desired content along with the usability issues that follow. Having too many platforms to explore content from ultimately leads to choice blindness and paralysis and has been noted by users to feel frustrating and wasteful. The focus of our ideation phase is to tackle these painpoints.
🙅🏻
Inaccessible content
Users tend to pay for more subscriptions than they actually need, and do it to capture exclusive content that would otherwise be unavailable to them.
💸
High cost
Most users interviewed that pay for their own subscriptions cite how expensive multiple subscriptions can be.
🐌
Choice paralysis
To add to the two previous issues, users can end up struggling to find what content to watch due to the large volume of options presented to them across several separate platforms.
Ideations + Design Solutions
Problem 1:
Aggregating Streaming Platforms
It is unrealistic to simply create an aggregator service that combined all the major streaming platforms together and expect to offer subscriptions at a reasonable price. Working around this limitation, we proposed a subscription bundling system that tackles all three problems.
Solution:
Platform Bundling System
We wireframed and prototyped a bundle onboarding process for new users that lets them choose a set bundle plan offering any of our selection of partnered streaming platforms. The logic considered usability issues found from our user research.
🤔
Bundle plans to curb choice paralysis
Design group feedback showed that giving users full control of the amount of platforms available to them caused choice paralysis. Applying Hick’s Law, we opted for three standard bundle plans to minimize the user’s cognitive load.
↩️
Always giving users a way out
Based on the Norman Nielsen Group’s usability heuristic of User Control and Freedom, we ensured the users would have “a way out” of any step in the process via back buttons and multiple cancel affordances.
🔄
Bundle renewal system
Users will also have the choice to reselect which bundled platforms they can watch on a monthly basis, giving users the flexibility of viewing more platforms than if individually purchased.
Problem 2:
Improving User Review System
Another problem we found across major streaming platforms is a lack of clarity and function in streaming content reviews. We pointed out issues users of existing streaming platforms face and ideated on features that could solve the multi-platform issue of limited review options.
Issue #1
Little user freedom
Many platforms have little affordance for users to rate and review content they have watched, some of which only having one option to like or dislike without any known impact outside of your account.
Issue #2
Ambiguous recommendations
Labels like "Most Liked" or "Top Rated" on content are ambiguous and hard to quantify. Many of these labels lack authorship, making it even harder for them to inform your next watch.
Solution:
Social Media Integration
For every show and movie in our acquisition, we introduced a review section that integrates reviews from existing social media. This provides users with different forms of reviews to inform decisions on their next watch.
Relevant content reviews to support user judgement
Reviews of streaming platform content with star ratings and comments support users’ decision making.
Empowering users via social media
Reviews can be found and sourced to existing social media platforms, connecting reviews to real people to provide clarity.
Utilizing hashtags to expose relevant content
Watching relevant video clips from social media gives users another option for deciding what to watch.
Other features
Feature 3: Wishlisting
We designed wishlisting logic to address users wanting to watch content not within their bundle for the month. Users will be notified of their wishlisted shows and which platforms they are available on during their bundle renewal.
Feature 4: Snacks on Demand
Our interview and survey findings showed that 80% of users will eat something while watching content and that Gopuff is a recognized name in the food delivery service. Seeing this business opportunity, we envisioned a partnership with Gopuff to surface discounted snacks to Blockbuster subscribers based on the shows and movies the user has watched. In our presentation, we showed users who watched Netflix’s Stranger Things being recommended Eggo waffles and chip dips for those who watched Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building.
Feature 5: Trailer Reel
Trailers have been cited by many users to be a major deciding factor in what content they watch. This insight led to creating a trailer page dedicated to recent and upcoming shows and movies to help users more conveniently find their next watch.
Design System
Color System
Semantic tokens documenting our color component rules based on our brand palette inspired by the SMPTE television color test bars.
Container System
Embodying a stylish comeback for the nostalgic brand, certain containers in our design library have sharp bevel corners that mirror our Blockbuster "ticket" motif that we carried from the old branding into our design system and brand renewal.
Account Customization
Customizable avatar icons created from the logo give users a more personalized experience in their accounts.
Takeaways
Cross-collaboration and breaking down department silos
Collaborating across every department in Siegel+Gale's NYC Office was a unique challenge especially when every intern had a different part to play throughout the entire project. Learning to meet in smaller groups of a select few departments was crucial for moving forward on time.
Presenting a Product and Telling a Story
Presenting as a group of 15 required several rehearsals meetings to be able to tell the cohesive and collaborative story of the product, as well as the various problems we've discovered and solved.
Next Steps
With a tight timeline, many ideas were kept in development to meet the product proposal date. After our project's completion, one of the first things to consider would be screen responsiveness and the onboarding process for users.