MeTime
Design Project Winter 2021
I worked with a talented group of young designers on creating a unique streaming app that would address the issues and pain points of users that frequent media streaming applications.
The Design Problem
29-36 year olds are very active users of media streaming apps (ex: Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc.).However, their work-schedules limit the time they can spend searching for new content. Our teams goal was to improve how content is found and filtered to help these users reach an informed decision quicker, providing them with more time to relax and unwind. Though there are more than plenty of movie and video streaming apps available on the market such as YouTube and Spotify. Most of the apps are lacking in some way or the other in that they do not provide an intuitive way of curating and personalizing the viewing experience of their users.
User Insights: Online Research
The team and I first set about doing some research online, into popular streaming apps in order to gain a basic understanding of the problems that users are facing when using streaming apps. We started by looking into forums and websites that showed us important user information and pain points. From our online research we found that :
Millennials are more likely than older age groups to have watched a video online in the previous 24 hours and visit social media sites several times a day.
Study highlights that Millenials prefer new tech because it helps them use time more effectively
Spotify Usage Data shows that 29% users are males 25-34, and that over half of the users are male.
This information demonstrates to us that these users are habitual and very active
User Insights: User Stories
Reddit Forum
A major pain point for millennials is that they are presented with inaccurate recommendations on their feeds that are not relevant to the content that they engage with
Spofity Forum
- Users describe not being able to engage and sort through curated content that they have stored
Hulu Community Forums
-Users express issues with being able to navigate the Hulu UI (not being able to locate the content that they want to watch)
User Insights Summed up
Recommended content does not align with user interests or use patterns
Unable to easily locate their favorite content on their respective feeds
Inability to search through/sort through curated content
At this point our team began to create two unique user personas that most appropriately captured , the target market as well as the issues that they are encountering with streaming apps.
User Personas
USER PERSONA #1 : Aaron
USER PERSONA #2 : 
We categorized our user personas into the users Core Needs and Frustrations
Storyboarding - User Journey
Having identified the different types of users that would be using streaming apps (as well as their pain points) our team then began to shape our user story. We took into account the issues outlined from our insights and attempted to figure out how we would fix them (outlined in our storyboards).
Storyboard #1:
Storyboard #2
Storyboard Insights :
After having drawn up what we want our user journeys to ideally look like, we then began to interview potential users that fit the demographic that we are targeting. We asked them how each of the user journeys that we sketched made them feel and their reactions to how we were going about solving the pain points.
Storyboard #1 Insights:
“ The ‘For you’ options are helpful like from what you're telling about hulu this sounds good, I like having the options like here's what hulu recommends for you and what we generally have. I feel I can relate to this one, a little more, the idea of like oh my lunch break, let me just see what I can do for after work. And feeling like I don't want to have to go through things that might not necessarily be my style I do appreciate that I like that, before your concept to me, makes a lot of sense, especially if you're trying to do this on a time crunch like do this quick because you know, even if it's after work you don't have all the time in the world, do you want to go home and relax and start relaxing as soon as you can” - JuanPablo, 30
Summary:
Our interviewee JuanPablo, found that the situation we presented in our storyboard was relatable and that he could put himself in the shoes of the main character. He found the “For You” tab to be helpful so that you are able to switch different types of levels of personalized content. Having all of it located in one place can feel overwhelming, but dividing general content and personalized content may help users organize their choices and inform their decision quicker.
Storyboard #2 Insights:
‘‘I really like the option of having the ability to search through my saved videos. I would even go a step further and also being able to search through the videos by tags, or having an additional option to sort through the videos by date.” -Larry Arriaza (Undergraduate), 29
Summary:
Our interviewee Larry Arriaza , found the ability to be able to search through curate content was very useful. Allowing the user to have more accessibility and control over their curated content will allow them to have a more seamless and immersive experience when using the application.
Wireframing
After having identified potential solutions as well as mapping a user journey I then set about creating some low-fidelity sketches. I focused mostly on how to make curated content more accessible to the user as well trying to personalize the entire experience by adding a shuffle button that would randomize any of the content available on the app and play it for the user when they are having trouble deciding on what content to watch or when they feel that the content being presented to them is not to their taste. In addition to this in my low-fidelity sketches I included the ability to search through ones playlists in an attempt to give users more control over their curated content. I also included different ways for users to search through their playlists such as being able to use tags.
One of my main goals while drawing out my low-fidelity sketches was to have an idea of what the home page should look like as well as how users should navigate from the homepages to different tabs
MoodBoard
Our team created a Moodboard in order for us to gain some inspiration for the later stages in our design process. Our Moodboard gave us a clear understanding of the feeling we wished to evoke in our users and helped formalize the aesthetic we needed to use to do so. The Moodboard also helped us stay consistent in our designs throughout the project .
Style Guide
Based on our moodboard our team arrived at the style guide below. Our team was keen on the aesthetic provided that came from using a cool color pallete that used light purples and violets.
We arrived at a color scheme that would use cool colors such as those that included light shades of purple and blue that would contrast well with a dark background.
Developing the High-Fidelity Prototype
After concretizing a style guide, moodboard and coming up with some wireframes, my team and I began to create some high-fidelity sketched of what we wanted the interface of our app to look like.
Here I visualize how the home page will look as well how the app will curate content for the users taste by creating a survey option built into the app
Here I visualize how playlists that store the users content would look and be organized
The Final High Fidelity Prototype
The Home Page
Searching by tags feature
Taste Curation
Content generated by a Curation Quiz that gauges users’ interests. Users are able to refine their curation again if they do not like their picks and can even be taken to randomized content through our Randomizer.
The Randomizer
The Playlist Creation Feature
A filter for users to refine their selection in their saved content list.
Gives the option to save content into playlists so users can further personalize their viewing experience and have content saved in advance for specific occasions
Our Saved Content Filter
This feature allows users to be able to search within their saved content (TV shows, etc.) by tagging the genre they are searching for.
Competitive Analysis of MeTime
How do we stack up against our competitors?
Usability Testing and User Comments
After having created our high fidelity prototype we then began to test our prototype with users who matched the target demographic that the app was being designed for.
During our user testing we interviewed three participants who fell within our target user scope and had them walk through a few of the unique core features within our app. Testing began with our ‘For You tab’ feature.
Feature #1:
‘For You’ Tab
“I like the level of personalization the for you tab provides however I feel like the taste curator should” - Lorenzo Arriaza , 32
3/3 of our interviewees found the ‘For You’ tab to be both convenient and time saving and agreed that -having something more personalized would help make the selection process easier.
Feature #2:
Content Filter
“I kind of nice that I’m not scrolling through a thousand items I don’t even need to look at, so it’s a time saver” - Guillermo Mata, 36
Insights:
Our usability testing revealed to us that:
-our users really like this feature and believe that it would help filter and access niche interests they may have
-3/3 of the interviewees agreed that this was definitely a feature they believed was necessary to incorporate within streaming apps
Feature #3:
Saved Content Filter
“I think it’s convenient especially since my queue on different streaming sites is pretty large and I’d like to be able to filter it when I have time to go back and see what I’ve saved” - Jose Vasquez
Our last feature that was tested by our users was our saved content filter/playlist. Our interviewees remarked that this feature was:
-Unique concept
-Can help save time when wanting to binge certain genres/titles
To see and hear the usability testing interviews:
To read the interview questions:
Improvements Made
Based off our user testing there were a couple insights about our playlist feature and randomizer button that led our team to make a few size and location changes. For our playlist feature we decompressed the overall look and increased the font size to help users locate it as well as resizing & relocating our randomizer button to the top of the ‘For You tab’ for clearer accessibility.
Improvement #1
Improvement #2
Further Improvements to Consider
These are some potential additional features that we would include:
Autoplay option
.
More advanced filter options, like an attention gauge, content, and length
Attention Gauge Filter
A nugget of insight that we gleaned from one of our teams interviews was the fact that many users oftentimes use their streaming apps just as background noise for when their energy is directed towards a task that requires a high cognitive load. As a result of how commonly this was said among the users, our team believed that one of the filters that should be included for both saved content (content specifically saved for the user) as well as within their own curated playlists was an attention gauge. Increasing the attention gauge will yield results specifically from genre that has been tagged. For example, if the user wants to view something where they can afford to pay attention , they can interact with the meter, dragging it towards the right. Searching with this tag will then result in action movies that require a high amount of attention.
Real life Applications
Around the same time we were developing our interface for MeTime, Spotify released an update that allowed for users to search through their playlists by mood. Essentially allowing their users to tag whatever genre they are feeling and add it to their ‘Find in playlist’ search bar. This would then yield results for that specific genre from the playlist they are searching through . This is very similar to our ‘search by tag’ filters for our ‘Saved Content’ tab, which allows our users to search through their curated content by genre. More on this feature can be found here: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-25/how-to-sort-your-favorite-songs-with-spotifys-new-genre-and-mood-filters/