Movie Club | Katerina Tsiapi

Movie Club is a simple app helping movie lovers find easily a good movie to watch based on their friends’ recommendations.

My role

Initial concept, Problem statement, User research, Affinity mapping, Competition analysis, Information Architecture, Sketches, Wireframes, User Flows, Prototypes, User Testing.

Built the product from zero.

Outcome

As part of my final project in General Assembly UX Design course, I invented a mobile app so that movie lovers can find easily a movie to watch based on their friends' suggestions.

My assumption

How many times have you or a friend tried to find a good movie to watch, going through an endless search…an endless trail of films that you flick across from one to the other only to realise that you’ve spent so much time searching and haven’t found anything worth-watching?

It has happened at some point to all of us. Even when we are with friends and want to find something to watch we go through the same mental strain.

User research

To validate my assumption I created a questionnaire and organised one-to-one interviews to gain insights into how people choose movies, what they do or how they feel before, after or while watching a movie and their motivations and expectations.

View Questionnaire

Affinity mapping

To synthesize and group my research findings into themes I’ve used a technique which is called Affinity mapping.

Key findings

Talking to people confirmed my hypothesis and made it clear that finding a good movie to watch among so much choice is frustrating.

When looking for a movie, people consider multiple variants such as their mood, recommendations from people they trust, what’s available, what’s on top of their mind, and how much time they have to spend.

Interview quotes

‘…and then I start scrolling for the relevant genre and then I can’t be bothered and then I can’t find anything and I turn it off…’

‘…I spend hours to pick a movie to watch and in the end the movie lasts less than the time I have spent to pick it…’

‘…unless I have a conversation with a friend and they say go watch this on Netflix or have you seen this film it’s really good…’

Personas

My primary persona, Ammes, is a movie buff who wants be immersed in a movie, feels that watching a movie is an investment of time and so he wants to get something back in reward. He wants to feel that his choice was worth it. He finds the process of picking a movie stressful and wishes there was an easy way to choose a good movie.

What's already out there?

I undertook competitor analysis to see what competitors are offering in terms of features and functionality, get a benchmark versus industry standards, identify opportunities and get inspired!

The framework I followed was both a Plus/Delta analysis and a Feature Inventory Comparison.

Plus/ Delta Competitive Analysis

Feature Inventory Comparison

The opportunity

Plus/Delta analysis and the Feature Inventory Comparison showed that there is an opportunity in the market. Various apps and websites help you choose a movie but none is based on friends’ recommendations. I decided to base my design process on this element and create a mobile app that will help movie lovers choose a movie based on their friends' recommendations.

Design process

I began the process with sketches that evolved into a paper prototype. I tested it with five users to get feedback and learn early on in the design process whether my idea and concept worked.

User feedback validated my idea for an app and gave me valuable feedback on whether users could perform the given task and their thinking process whilst interacting with the prototype.

Paper Prototype

Wireframes: first iteration

Once I had my first prototype ready for use, I knew I had to put it in the hands of my users again.

I asked them to follow the following scenario: It’s Saturday night, you are staying in, and you would like to watch a good movie. You open Movie Club and you choose a movie based on your friend’s Peter suggestions. You choose La La Land.

What was users' feedback?

As in the paper prototyping, testers followed user flow intuitively
Screen 1: Testers wanted to be able to use the app also as guests without having to sign up. They also wanted to be able to sign in when they returned to use the app
Screens 6A, 6B: Testers said the copy wasn’t clear and needed rephrasing
Screen 7: Testers said it was confusing both in terms of copy and functionality. They said screen 7 is not needed
Screens 8, 9: Testers said they wanted to be able to add the film to their watchlist. They also said the button ‘I’ve seen this’ doesn’t add anything

Screens 9A, 9B: Testers said they were confused with the yellow ribbon on top
Testers said they missed the ‘back’ button and being able to go to their ‘profile’ earlier in the screens
Testers said they wanted to see information about ‘running time’ in the movie card
Button ‘I’ve seen this’ should be removed as it doesn’t add something to the experience
Need for bottom navigation to be visible earlier on in the process

User flows

Along with wireframing, I created an outline of the different paths for my persona, mapping out every step from opening the app through to successfully choosing a movie.

Users could easily flow through the interface without hesitation or confusion. After listening to their feedback and critique, I came up with a short list of changes to make in revision.