What do I watch ?

A UX case study on OTT platforms/streaming applications and the crux on what goes into making a decision on what to watch.

It is easy to say that, most of our free time these days is quite literally spent on watching shows that we get hooked on to and just cannot stop binging on them. We have all been there and we have all spent way too much time on applications such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video , YouTube you name it!

It is quite interesting to study the human behavior on how we perceive things that please us or things that intrigue our minds to be so invested on something we are watching. We often fantasize about the things we watch on these platforms and are more often cannot wait for the next episode or feel that the next series cannot come soon enough.

On the contrary once we are done spending time watching these shows or movies on these applications we tend to search for something more interesting to consume, to fill the void. Here is where the user tends to search for new shows, movies or new genres that he/she has never seen before. The time taken in making a decision on these platforms vary and each of them have their ways to make their user find the things they want to or where application suggests things based on the users tastes.

This study aims on the reduction of time taken in making a decision on what to watch on these applications.

So, lets dive deeper into how and what a user experiences while making these decisions and how UX design and its principles can help better the users experience.

To start with , here is a problem statement.

A product/business problem statement

Due to the Pandemic which followed with the Lockdown, there has been an increase in audience subscribing to watch shows and movies on OTT platforms. While using these apps, People tend to get very confused with the large number of options available. An OTT app wants to make it easier for people to decide what to watch.

The research problem statement.

Users are facing a decision making problem on what to watch on an OTT platform, due to the large collection of shows/series/movies. As a UX designer you first want to understand the behavior of people trying to choose what they want to watch and the different factors that influence the decision. Plan a research to identify the behavioral patterns to help the business cater to users in an efficient way.

The given problem statement requires us designers to find a solution to reduce the time consumed by users in choosing what they would like to watch on their desired OTT platforms, adding to this I would also like to research and understand on the users behavior for choosing a particular OTT app over the others as well. This dive deep will give me insights and understanding on why users tend to go back these apps more than that of the others.

What I can derive from the problem statements

• Understanding user behaviors and problems while using an OTT application.
• Understanding key factors that influence user behavior and decision making.
• Design a solution that helps users make a decision faster.

Diving Deeper and understanding the problem statements using the 5 W’s and 1 H question : Who ? What ? When ? Where ? Why ? and How ?

It is important now in the infant stages of this case study to understand the problem statement in subject to the users of the OTT applications and to understand their behavioral characteristics and their influences that take to make a decision.

Who ?

• Who are the users of the OTT application products ?

I will be researching on who are the typical users of the OTT products, Analyzing usage behaviors across demographics and the age criteria.

What ?

I will be dwelling into the crux of what an OTT platform is and what kind of problems the user faces with the vast selection of choices that is given to them , what is it about these application makes the user cling on to it for hours.

When ?

I will be researching when in a particular days time is the user driven to use the OTT product and when the user was first introduced to the OTT product and the influence of the pandemic in getting users to have the need of an OTT streaming application.

Where ?

I will need to understand through research and analysis, where exactly in the users experience of an OTT platform are they facing a decision making problem.

Why ?

I will need to understand why a user opted to switch from traditional / conventional viewing of shows and movies to a streaming OTT platform and why do they opt for a particular OTT platform from the rest if any. Getting more user perspectives through user interviews and screeners.

How ?

How does a user discover content on the OTT application ? How long do they spend to make a decision on what to watch ? I will need to understand user behavioral patterns through user interviews.

The understanding in which I will be progressing through this case study will be YOU ≠ USER

The assumptions and perspective of a designer should not be used to solve problems that are faced by a user who is facing issues with their experience, rather the problem must be solved with user perspectives gathered from conversations and insights from your research and interviews

Research steps and Techniques that will be followed during the case study are as follows :

1. Secondary Research
2. Primary Research
3. Data Analysis via Empathy maps and User Personas gathered from above research.
4. Define Problems and Ideate Solutions
5. Wireframing (Low fidelity and High Fidelity)
6. Prototype UI
7. Usability testing
8. Final Wireframing
9. Final UI presentation.

1. Secondary Research

Secondary Research, also known as Desk research is a process of gaining insights and information through extensive research by googling about the OTT applications , understanding its usage across different demographics etc. Here the main agenda is to get detailed insights through user studies , published articles and learn about the users.

Press articles, statistical analysis, behavioral insights conducted by loads of brands and companies are available on the internet which is highly resourceful for desk research.

Desk research provides you with concrete evidence of the market for the particular topic you are working on and in my case information and analysis of the OTT applications.

There is insurmountable information on the OTT study available which I have used to conduct my research.

Why is this important ? Is it necessary ?

Research on the subject matter given , opens a wide range of information present on the internet which provides studies and analysis for the topic you are working on. Before you try to fix anything it is important to know what you are fixing in the first place, and so acquiring knowledge about the problem is very important before you can proceed to solve the problem itself, therefore desk research plays an important role in your UX research journey.

Information gathered from my Secondary Research is provided below

1.1 Rise in popularity of OTT applications

Factual / Statistical Insights : Three in four individuals would prefer to watch a movie on various over-the-top (OTT) platforms in these social distancing times compared to just one in four who would still love to go to a cinema hall.

- About 71 per cent of respondents find ticket price a factor to watch a movie in a theatre — National Herald.

Behavioral Insights : As per this analysis we can understand that the behavioral attributes of users are leaning more toward the usage of OTT platforms to view content rather than opt for the previously conventional medium of going to the cinemas.

Source : Click here

Reasons for a rise in usage of OTT platforms

a. Social distancing in a movie theatre could affect the overall experience of the user, the experience of watching a movie is sparsely absent.

b. Cost factor, ticket prices rising would mean the user to not opt for a movie at the mall and would rather watch it at home using the OTT services

Other factors that has caused a rise in OTT application usage by the populace.

Factual / Statistical Insights : Paid subscribers are rising 60–80% and the consumption on their platforms is increasing nearly five times, video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar and many others still see their users facing problems in discovering content — Live Mint

Behavioral Insights : As per this statement by Live mint it can be understood that although there is infinite content available for users to view the problem of choice still persists.

Source : Click here

1.2Expectation from a Users POV

Factual / Statistical Insights : User experience issue. Where the user expects your interface to be as per the competitors; seamlessly designed interfaces such as Netflix, Hotstar etc. Also long contracts, heavy fees, a lack of payment options, all these can conspire to ensure you never attract enough subscribers to thrive — Viaccess

Behavioral Insights : Attracting the user’s eye and making their experience similar to other apps is vital. Users expect/tend to have a familiarized behavior when it comes to certain kinds of apps and changing the design layout and structure of it would affect user experience.

I would like to point out the idea of Jacob’s Law here where it states that “Users prefer your site to be designed the way other sites they use are designed.”

• Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar.
• By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior user experiences in which the users can focus on their tasks rather than on learning new models.

Source : Click here

Reference to Jakob’s law : https://lawsofux.com/en/jakobs-law/

1.3 How OTT platforms created a necessity for users to opt in to their applications.

Factual / Statistical Insights : OTT video streaming platforms in India can be described as the “luxury turned necessity”. The number of users of OTT video streaming platform are growing day by day, with India being the home to 687.62 million internet users by September 2019 marking the second largest in the world.

Behavioral Insights : The internet has played a major role in defining user’s behavior compared to the past to present date.

Internet being affordable, user’s tend to stream their videos much more often than not, this has given rise to the use of OTT streaming apps.

The Impact on Age Groups

• Children have highly benefited from the volume of content available across platforms. The emergence of edutainment and free content on major OTT applications have allowed kids to entertain as well as educate themselves digitally.
• The youth constitute the largest audience of OTT in India. Entrepreneurs, as well as professionals, have adopted OTT as a part of the daily routine. The concept of ‘Netflix and Chill’ has made its way into the urban lifestyle, taking on the role of a friend and entertainer.
• The constant content updates on OTT platforms have come across as a boon to the older population in India. While couples are able to enjoy the hits of their time with their partner, those in solitude have access to a plethora of spiritual and religious content.

Source : Link 1 ; Link 2

1.4 Important factor that influences a user’s behavior in making him/her a frequent user of the application.

Factual / Statistical Insights : Subscribers stick around when there’s engaging content and an easy way to find said content. An OTT app’s success depends almost entirely on the ease of content discovery. Content recommendations drive 80% of shows watched on Netflix and account for 70% of YouTube views, after all.

Keeping subscribers engaged with content they want to watch — or more precisely, maximizing the speed and accuracy at which they can find relevant, personalized content — is key to subscriber satisfaction, churn reduction, and long-term retention.

Behavioral Insights : 51% of people say “accessibility/ search of desired content” ranks in their top three reasons for choosing, subscribing to, and recommending an OTT app or streaming service.

Outlying the essence of the Hick’s Law here which states “The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.”

A designers effort here should be to minimize the time taken to make a decision by the user.

“having a variety of options is good. It drives customer consideration. But once the number of choices gets too high, a person’s happiness goes down.”- Jennifer Clinehens

Source : Link 1; Link 2

Reference to Hick’s Law : https://lawsofux.com/en/hicks-law/ ;

2. Primary Research

Primary research is where you get to talk to the users directly via a phone call or a meeting and you get a first hand insight into the experience factor of these users on the applications.

In regards to my problem statement it will be interesting to understand if there is a similar pattern all users face in comparison or if there are unique problems they might be facing. Suggestions that the user may provide during the primary research is also quite insightful which may end up leading to a great feature on the app itself.

How is it relevant ?

Getting an understanding of the problems faced on OTT platform via secondary research is vital for the UX research however getting a information from a direct user and understanding their pain points and their experiences positive and negative paves way for a broad spectrum of opportunities to better your end solutions and end product as well.

The following are the steps that I have followed to conduct my Primary Research :

2.1 Defining Target Users

So after defining my ideal target users to conduct my Primary research, I now will have to find appropriate users to have the call with and discuss about the positives and the negatives , understand the problems and listen.

How do I do this ? I used a Google forms interview screener and sent it out to people of the UX community I’m in and also to friends and family.

Interesting summaries gathered by screeners :

Based on the above understanding I finalized by target users and approached them for a 1:1 call user interview to discuss the areas of OTT platform that they find problematic or time consuming to use etc.

2.2 Creating a Session Guide.

Here, I have come up with a guide which has questions that I will be asking my target user to get an insight of their experience with the OTT apps.

Quick link to the session guide : Click here

An important factor to avoid while interacting with your users is prompting.

Prompting can be simply defined as the interviewer forcing questions on a user rather than actively listening and asking questions that are appropriate or based on the users response or even creating a bias or giving them suggestions.

The interview has to be focused entirely on the user that means the interviewer will have to do less of the talking and the user the lot of it.

2.3 Insights gathered from user interviews

This user felt that most of the recommendations that the OTT applications provide are more towards pushing the OTT apps original shows or movies rather than recommending shows of the users actual taste. User mentioned specifically that recommendations are the go to for him to content discovery , if the recommendations are not apt he would spend around 15 mins to try and find what he wants.

The user also pointed out that OTT apps are more convenient than conventional means of watching movies or shows via cable TV or D2H etc as you do not need to follow a schedule.

User feels that the content that an OTT platforms provides to its customer is key in retaining users to the platform and also that bad content is not an option. The decision making process entirely depends on the content present on the OTT , the user feels that if the app does not cater to the likes and needs of theirs it no point spending too much time searching for content on it.

This user feels that although some applications that provide good content are expensive its worth it , because they do not need to spend time searching for the show elsewhere or watch it while it is up on the theatres.

This user feels that whenever they want to access multilingual content, it is very hard to get what you are looking for because the app suggests or implicates content that you are not really interested in.

User felt that on most of the OTT apps the categorization of content is wrong, for example Genre wise search gives you shows or movies that aren’t really from the genre you are looking for.

2.4 Key Learnings derived at this stage

1. Listen to the users responses carefully and make notes as they respond. Categorizing their responses on a “Says” “Thinks” “Does” and “Feels” map.
2. Do not suggest answers or pointers while they are responding to avoid bias.
3. Record your calls with the users consent.
4. Try to get the user to talk as much as possible rather than you speaking a lot about the problem statement.

3. Data Analysis via Empathy maps and User Personas

Analyzing the raw data gathered from my secondary and primary research will be the focus in this section.

I will be creating two distinct User sets , Empathy maps and user personas gathered from the user interviews and data points gathered.

3.1 User Sets

From the data gathered I will be classifying users into two distinct user sets. A easy and simple way to do this would be to understand a pattern in the responses they have provided. By understanding my conversations with the users I have decided with the following two user sets namely ;

1. Deeply Decisive The decision on what to watch depends majorly on reviews/ratings on the movie/show, like IMDB, Rotten tomatoes etc. (Do not want to watch something that is not worthwhile)
2. Casually Choosy Likes to scroll and find what they are in the mood for. Re-watches older shows if the decision on what to watch cannot be made in 30–40 mins. Arrival/launch date is a trigger.

3.2 What is an Empathy map ?

Empathy maps are usually used and created right after user interviews are completed where a visual representation of how the user feels , what they do , what they thing and what they say can be observed. I have created Empathy maps based on the two user sets mentioned above.

Empathy Maps of the two user sets

3.3 User Personas : is an important artifact of data formed during initial stages of research effectively after the Primary Research stage . Differentiating users based on their responses to two user sets and analyzing their behavioral and their decision making pattern can be done by creating these user personas. User Personas of two users each from the above user sets. The first one being “Deeply Decisive” and the second “Casually Choosy”

the “Deeply Decisive” User

the “Casually Choosey” User

4. Defining problems and Ideating Solutions

Now that I have analyzed the research data and created empathy maps and personas, the pain points or frustrations and other insights of your users are clear.

4.1 In order solve these frustrations or problems that I have identified , I will be formulating a few “HOW MIGHT WE” to come up with ideas to solve the problems.

OTT platforms provide a wide range of options for the user to choose from and more often than not the users end up spending a lot of their time scrolling through trying to find a show or a movie etc to watch which are worth while.

• Possible solution

Introduce a “Discover” button that the user can quickly filter out and choose the genre , language , region etc of their liking based on the mood or company they are in at a given point in time. Can also implement the “Play something” feature.

The content provided to users on an OTT platform is fairly catered toward the type of genres and the type of shows/movies the user watches but the recommended list is somewhat or mostly Ambiguous on most of the OTT apps we see today.

• Possible solution

The recommended list should contain shows/movies that are intertwined with the user’s search keywords on the app instead of including recommendations that are more “popular” or are “high on demand”. In this case the recommendations can be based on the keywords the user has used in the “Discover” button which is mentioned above.

Through this search technique the content curated can be more relatable to the user. An interactive “Recommendation Settings” button can be implemented similar to the “Discover” button but the difference here can be the user can set recommended content via filters like Language and genre for a set period of time for example 2 days , A week , A month , 6 months etc so that the content curated for the user is as per the users taste.

Most OTT platforms provide international content which are basically movies/shows that originate from foreign countries, most often than not this content is not visible on the OTT platform at first glance or this content is not in high demand and does not show up on the popular/trending cards.

• Possible solution

To implement an “International” category card or a cover. By clicking on this card the user will be moved to a screen where international content would be displayed with a few popular shows having a video banner with trailers.

Include Anime content as well with vivid colors to attract users.

(Through my user interviews one of the users mentioned the lack of anime content in the application they use constantly)

It is important to retain the users by opting the same navigation and in app designs on another app and not to change them while creating or designing a new experience for the user within an app that the he/she uses.

“Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar.” — Jakob’s Law

Users have experienced situations where a content already consumed re-appearing on the “Continue watching “ section and also another issue in the same bucket is the content which was paused earlier has moved away from the “Continue watching: section of the app.

• Possible solution

Implementing a color coded stroke or border to the show/movie that is already watched and to the shows that require to be resumed.

5. Wireframing

Wireframes are a way for us to understand how the information could be laid out before we get into the final UI.

Based on the problems and possible solutions I have mentioned and formulated on the above “how might we” questions I now will have to come up with effective solutions and will be using wireframes to ideate my solutions.

First off, I created rough wire frames using a pen and paper and it is a bit shabby to look at 😜 however it is important at this stage to pen all ideas that come up while you’re thinking off solutions.

5.1 The following is a low-fidelity wireframe chalking out effective solutions

Low fidelity wireframe

5.2 High Fidelity wireframe — After roughly sketching out solutions on paper I had to iterate and think off solutions to be presented in an accurate and effective manner.

Note : I had created these wireframes before user testing or getting feedback directly from the users point of view. Further iterations have been done post the usability tests.

Key learnings :

Iterations of wireframes are a great way to understand if your proposed solution is effective or not.

Do not edit your old wireframe and iterate on them, you will need to keep your old Wireframes intact. Create new wireframes when you think of a possible solution for a newer area or after user feedback.

Do not try to perfect things, I found that I spent too much time perfecting the wireframes even to the tiniest details of it and smaller aspects like how my wireframes looked visually , these were unnecessary and I did loose a lot of time.

You only need to make sure that your wireframe show how the final UI would work and it is important to mention the characteristics of each of the components you are adding, make sure you explain these things clearly.

6. Prototype UI

Presenting Wireframes to a user and asking them for their opinions and feedbacks would be catastrophic to say the least , the user would easily understand using the UI more than that of a wireframe.

Therefore, based on the above consolidated information and wireframes I moved on to create the UI.

For the representation of the UI I have referenced Amazon Prime Video and used it as my base application for the UI screens.

At this stage I worked on creating UI screens appropriately using the solutions I gathered from my wireframes I also tried to attain similarities with my UI screens to that off Amazon Prime Video.

Components used on my Prototype UI

UI components

Highlights derived from the prototype screens.

1. Home/Landing page contains Hero slider at the top , followed by Continue watching for users to easily find the content they were watching earlier to resume their experience.
2. Followed by the “Recommended “ content for the user specifically catered to the users tastes. It has both a star and number ratings for better user information.
3. Followed by the Discover button where on clicking the button the user will be taken to a new page where user can filter on the given options and curate content based on the choices made. This placed here so that the user does not have to scroll endlessly to find what they want to watch but can quickly filter out based on mood and taste. It is placed right after Continue watching and Recommended so that the user can easily choose to resume watching or opt for recommended if both are not the users choice then quickly move to the Discover option.
4. Which follows specific language which will take the user to language specific content pages where the user can view content from the selected language of choice.
5. Followed by “International” Content which is specifically curated with content with multiple foreign languages and trending shows and movies.
6. Which is then followed by common trending shows and movies and the “Play something” button. The reason why it is placed here is so that the user by now has scrolled down to almost the end of the page and if the user has not found anything watch yet , the play something feature will take them to a page where they will view content randomly curated by the application.

7. Usability Testing

After spending way too much time on developing my prototype UI, I then proceeded the Usability testing stage

Usability testing is when the designer presents the prototype UI screens to users and is the stage where the designer gets to hear feedback and suggestions from the users first hand. It is key to notice the satisfaction and the dissatisfaction, the irritants , area where the user feels lost and many more.

What is the need for Usability testing ?

• Understand how the user interacts with the UI , if their navigation has become faster or slower
• Gain feedback from the users about what interactions work better or in their favor and what interactions do not work.
• Listen to the users call outs about certain specific elements or interactions .
• Gather the information and improve the design.

Now, I have to prepare a questionnaire which will serve me as a guide while asking questions to the user while they are made to test my prototype screens.

These questions are meant for probing the users as well. This is to gain enough information from the user, the Usability testing is a very important stage where the data gathered is vital to re-design the UI screens to best fit the users ask.

7.1 Observations gathered from Usability testing

From the insights gathered from my users for the prototype UI screens I then proceeded to further implement these ideas to better my UI designs.

8. Final Wireframing

Key changes added to the wireframe from the first iteration

• Instead of the Discover button taking users to a +1 page , I created a floating filter that the user can quickly select based on their mood and taste and hit the “Discover” button.
• Rating system to be changed to a Number rating instead of number nd star ratings to have better visibility of information on ratings of the content to the user , users during tesing had mentioned that its easier to read numbers than seeing a star rating , number rating was more affirming.
• Play something button will directly take the user to the play screen instead of +1 page.
• Added a “Profiles” page , where the users “My stuff” and “Recommendation settings” are found. My stuff will act as a dump of all content that the user has added on to the list and the recommendation settings helps the user in setting how the recommended content on the app will be displayed.
• Added information bubbles where the user can understand what the feature performs.

8.1 Designing final UI

Breakdown of each screen iterations made and reasons outlined below.

Landing Screen and placement of multiple user choices.

Iteration on the Landing page sliders : Few iterations made here are the carousel on the hero slider from left and right arrow heads to dotted carousels. This fixed user navigation issue that was faced by users during testing. This helped the user to place their thumb on the banner and slider left or right rather than previously trying to hit the arrow key appropriately or at the right spot to get the slide navigation working appropriately and easily for the user.

1. Removed “Try our new Discover” to just “Discover” : This is an introduction of a new button to the user that will help them discover content much faster , previously it had the banner “Try out our new Discover” , one of the user pointed out that this negatively affected them as I feel its something new and he might not have the time to explore it and would ignore and keep scrolling , the idea of just having one button that says “Discover” has more visibility and catches the eye of the user while scrolling.
2. Aesthetical upgrade of buttons : Added a comprehensive top nav and bottom nav to the screen which the previous prototype lacked , users had mentioned of the “back” button being absent in screens which led them to be lost within the app at times.

Recommended content page

1. Major iteration from user feedback was to have a number rated view instead of a Star and number rated view , users did mention that its easier to just see the number straight forward and get an understanding rather than look at the stars and figure out if its 3.5 or 4 etc.
2. Each content will have a hover card that will slide up on tab, that will give info like the ratings , description and cast , with a direct play button installed on the content image.

Discover Button iteration

1. Major iteration made here was the removal of a +1 screen when users tapped on the Discover button on the home page. Previous prototype showed that When the user clicks/taps on the discover button it would take them to this +1 page to filter choices.

Users stated during the testing phase that an unnecessary need of a new page is too complex to make a few decision , and thus a hovering a filter screen was developed so that the user can quickly select their choices and hit the “Discover button” to get curated content

Play Something feature iteration

1. Major iteration made here was again the removal of an unnecessary +1 page for the user. however here the +1 page had a scrolling through option as well which defeated the whole point of solving the problem where “Users want to find stuff faster with lesser scrolling” , therefore during the testing phase User 3 in specific found that the Play something feature that is provided should automatically play a movie/show and not take them to another page where he ends up scrolling .

The following screens show how this issue was fixed and updated to a more user friendly UI

Features added on “User profile”

Based on the initial prototype testing, the users suggested / pointed out that the content usually is not in line with my taste or have no control on the recommendations made by the application , One user also pointed out that a great feature would be to watch along with friends within the app.

I thought to myself how would these feature come in line with solving the problem statement of decreasing the time time consumed by the user to find the appropriate content.

I figured that if a screen was designed to specifically help users curate the recommendations made by the app, the user will eventually spend lesser time than usual to find the content they are looking for right ? :D

Secondly, the watch along with friends feature , this would be a fun feature and here the user can pre-plan on what to watch together with friends or discuss with friends on what to watch and then schedule a watch along together , by doing this the user just has to find the exact content they are looking for and not spend anymore time scrolling through.

Here is the UI

Both the above features will be accessible from the User profile option. Once in , there are multiple options like “Manage profiles, Create a new profile etc , here the user can find the “Watch along” and the “Recommendation settings” option as well.

By choosing the “Recommendation Settings” (depicted towards the right of the UI screen) the user will be taken to a hovering filter menu where the user can select appropriate filter , and filter out the type of content the app should recommend and for how long the settings should be on for, this gives wider control to the user to view content displayed on the app that is more relevant to their tastes.

Secondly , the “Watch Along” (depicted towards the left of the UI screen) feature , the user here has a few options that he/she can select , like add friends , view their existing friend list , schedule a watch along together and as well as search for the exact content they would like to watch together. By selecting the friends from the friends list and choosing the content and the appropriate time , and lastly clicking the “Watch along” button , sends notifications to other users on the app for a reminder of watch along.

Once the watch along begins there is a live chat along with the content playing this makes it a very interactive and a fun way to watch movies and shows together with friends within the OTT app.

Additional feature — Informative hovering content specific cards

The above screens are the final iterations and designs made post user feedback and suggestions received.

The final working representation of the UI can be viewed here : Final Prototype UI Design of Amazon Prime Video

Video of the final Prototype

To conclude : Based on the given problem statement which was to solve or reduce the decision making time taken by users on the OTT platforms , the above interfaces and features within the application will help the users make a decision faster.

However there is a matter of scalability of the given features on a business point of few and how feasible it would be to add such features to the application. On a designer’s point of view I believe that the above iterations and features will be sufficient for users to make a decision faster.

Key Learnings from the project.

Do not discard your prototypes just because of a certain user feedback , understand what the problem is and try to work backwards to better the UI.

Make sure you take notes during user interviews and user testing phases, as these notes are the base on which you will progress through the defining solutions. Recording the call with the users permission is also a great way to archive your interaction with the user.

Not all user suggested features received during user testing can be implemented or accommodated on the UI. The design must be coherent to users feedback as a whole.

Remember that you are solving a problem for the user and not yourself , the job of the designer should not be to fix problems that they think is the best way forward.

Research is a very important aspect when it comes to user facing issues such as the OTT application , its important to try and understand the industry to which the problem statement refers to.

In retrospect : All though I have taken a lot of time to design the UI to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible the end goal must be that ‘ has the design solved the issues the user was facing’ . The importance of the UI being aesthetically pleasing to the user is in fact an important aspect to consider , but solving the problem at hand should be the UX designers main goal.

I also have been able to relate the problems and design solutions based on a few UX laws such as Jacob’s Law and Hick’s Law.

Thank you for making it this far and reading my case study on OTT applications and solving the issues related to them 😊. Please do share your feedback and reviews on the comments section, would be awesome to hear from you . 👍

It would also be great to connect with you on Linkedin as well, here is a link to my Linkedin

Here is a link to my other UX project : Design Thinking Project.

Finally I would like to thank UX Anudeep and GrowthSchool for the constant support , publishing helpful content and providing mentorship throughout the course of the project.