timeline
6 week group project | spring 2022
television meets social media. designing an app for fans & communities.
role
ux researcher + designer
tools
Figma
GSuite (sheets, forms)
skills
user research, interface design, brand design, prototyping
collaborators
sarah bautista, thythy do, ryan jung
Overview
No service exists that’s dedicated for discussion and ratings about TV shows. Letterboxd exists for movies, but there’s no established “Letterboxd” for television, which leaves out the large population of consumers and fans who want to rave about their favorite shows.
Nowadays, people share everything about their daily lives with their friends and community – whether it be what they had for lunch or the rude person they encountered on their way to work. Why not create an app where they can share and discuss their favorite TV shows as well?
binge advertisement mock up shown above
Research + Key Pain Points
We interviewed 5 different individuals, and gathered data about how they consume entertainment, when they are most active, and what they do after they’ve finished watching their show and/or movie. Using the data we collected from the 5 interviews, we created user personas as well as story boards to see just how potential users would interact with our product.
Key Pain Points
While conducting research for our idea, we also took a look at our direct competitor, Letterboxd; we also looked at Reddit as an indirect competitor- wanting our idea to be a blend of the entertainment platform as well as the social discussion board. We noticed a few things that were needed from both:
1. A social review platform doesn’t exist for TV shows, only movies
2. Lacking a platform for fans to discuss one specific topic- related to their favorite shows
3. No space to discuss
Ideating
After our user interviews, story boarding and competitive analysis, we ended up with this very rudimentary mock up. We wanted a social platform that used thread based discussion posts, allowed you to create personalized collections of television shows, and connect with friends.
Critiques
We received critiques and feedback in class from our classmates and professor, and developed a more comprehensive low-fidelity mock up of our product. An important feature that people mentioned was to see the ratings of recommended shows, as well as seeing what friends rated shows that the user may not have seen yet.
mobile experience v2
binge's brandguide
Solution
After designing our initial app and gaining feedback in class, we tweaked it in accordance to our users, and ended up with the final version of BINGE (shown below).
1. Discussion form for tv shows, broken down by season/episode.
2. Collections- organize shows however users want.
3. Activity feed- see what shows friends have reviewed, and what they thought about it.
4. Profile- see user's favorite shows/genres, their recently watched, and their reviews.
Takeaways
After this design process, an important thing I noticed was the importance of an open mind. Our app was inspired by Letterboxd, meaning they were also our most important direct competitor.
Understanding how and when to push features and designs could have led to a more industry-changing design, and could have made our design stand out more. Recognizing features that exist outside of our direct and indirect competitors was also helpful during the ideation process.
Conducting usability tests would also measure impact, as well as help us test what features are innovative in the industrym and any potential features that we missed.
