TinyFlix
A fun new method for peer-to-peer movie recommendations.
In this project I immersed myself into the world of streaming entertainment. Over the course of 80 hours I interviewed Netflix users, examined features of different streaming platforms and read countless app reviews, then contrived an imaginary new feature that might improve the experience of a Netflix user and potentially give a market advantage to Netflix over other streaming platforms. I conducted usability testing with a handful of other Netflix users to test the efficacy of my design.
Netflix has been enormously successful since its start in 1997, providing films by mail and then via streaming to millions of users. Over the past several years a number of new streaming services have emerged, providing new competition for streaming customers. As of January 2022 Netflix represented a full 25% of the streaming market, with Amazon Prime Video at a close second place with 19%. The various streaming platforms are quite similar to each other, though there are subtle differences. Amazon Prime provides a feature called X-Ray, which offers a user a glimpse behind the scenes of a film production, for those viewers who are curious about such things. Disney+ owns the Star Wars franchise and a great deal of family-friendly content. HBO Max has critically acclaimed original content and most of Studio Ghibli’s titles.
I set out to imagine a new feature for Netflix that could give them a competitive edge over other streaming platforms, but more importantly to provide users with something they won’t find elsewhere.
I began by spending some time comparing different platforms and reading reviews and Reddit threads in order to learn about user complaints and pain points. There were plenty of complaints, but many of them were things like “they keep raising the price” and “they keep canceling my shows.” One complaint that did reoccur, in various forms, was:
Brainstorming with a couple of friends led me to wonder if there could be a way to improve Netflix’s famous algorithms, or if there could be a better method of sharing film recommendations between users.
With these two ideas in mind, I conducted remote interviews with users of Netflix and other streaming services so I could ask more in-depth questions. I spoke with 6 users ages 34-80 (yes, 80!), who had both positive and negative opinions about Netflix, though no particular theme emerged for complaints, other than running out of ideas of what to watch next. All 6 users get recoommendations from friends or directly from Netflix.
Key Insight:
When asked if they wish they could more accurately tailor how Netflix recommends things to them, all 6 users I spoke with said yes. Some reported they would prefer to answer one long questionnaire or quick questions after watching something or stopping partway. For example,
Q: why did you stop watching this title after 3 minutes?
a. Doorbell/phone/baby interrupted but I’ll return later;
b. I didn’t realize it starred Mel Gibson and I can’t stand him;
c. I just remembered I’ve already seen it.
Each of these reasons are much more informative than the simple fact a user stopped watching something.
But when I asked if they use the thumbs up/thumbs down feature that currently exists? 5 of 6 admitted they do not.
The Netflix users I interviewed all said they share and receive movie recommendations with people they know. When they share with others, ⅔ of users interviewed directly tell someone about a film, and ⅓ post to social media. Typically just the film title is shared, or possibly a link to an article or official film trailer. When most people are told about a movie they might like it’s up to them to remember to look it up the next time they’re using a streaming platform. Netflix does provide a way to share a link directly to a Netflix title but it’s only available on mobile, and it’s somewhat buried.
I realize there could be some serious copyright issues with this idea, but I thought a fun way to share movie recommendations would be for a user to create a brief clip from a film and text it to someone, with a link to the actual film on Netflix. Even if the receiver isn’t a Netflix subscriber, they would still be able to view the clip their friend made. I imagined it would work like this:
One issue that quickly became clear is that this feature would work differently across different viewing platforms: I had originally imagined the user above switching from TV to phone in order to make a clip, but some of the Netflix users I interviewed don’t have Netflix on their phone. If they made a clip using their TV they wouldn’t be able to text it to a friend, but they could save it to share later. I laid the process out in a user flow diagram:
This project was limited to 80 hours so I focused on designing the mobile version of the clip editor and a desktop version of Netflix screens with thumbnails of the clips incorporated. The prototype mimicked the experience of watching a Netflix movie on a mobile device, with an additional icon labeled “TinyFlix” available at the bottom of the screen.
When they found a part of the film they wanted to send to a friend the user would tap TinyFlix, which would automatically capture the previous 30 seconds they had viewed. The following screen, modeled after a GIF editor, allowed a user to trim the clip to capture exactly what they wanted, then send it. TinyFlix would be limited to 30 second each to prevent users from pirating and sharing entire films.
Because a phone is so small I thought a user might want to fine-tune the start and end points with something other than just a slider, so I added manual time adjusters modeled after IOS alarm setting controls.
Early feedback on this design made me realize that although I had cribbed controls that would be familiar to users of GIF makers, my design didn’t look Netflix-y enough. So I modified the slider to look like the red circle that shows a viewer’s progress through a film was split into a start and end point. I also decided that because the user would only have a 30 second clip to begin with, rather than the entire film, there wasn't really a need for manual start and end time controls, that they added clutter to the design. If this product were actually being developed, it would be helpful to test the validity of that assumption; I wasn't able to create a realistic enough prototpye to truly test whether a user could accurately enough trim a clip, but I did wonder.
The friend receiving a TinyFlix would be able to watch the film or save it for later, and when they opened Netflix on any device they would see thumbnails of the TinyFlix others had sent.
In these designs I tried to replicate the typefaces and colors and general proportions of Netflix, to make TinyFlix as seamlessly integrated as possible. My first iteration of the thumbnails was clearly too bulky and obvious to blend in well.
I tested my prototype with five users, ages 14-50, using an iPhone SE and my laptop. Although these users currently share film recommendations via text, they were all able to complete the sequence of tasks needed to create and send a TinyFlix, without any guidance from me.
Understood the concept of TinyFlix: 5/5
Could trim end of clip with slider: 5/5
Could send TinyFlix to a friend: 5/5
Could watch received TinyFlix: 5/5
Could open the full film in Netflix: 5/5
One surprising finding was when I asked them where they would expect to find recommendations from friends on their home screen, 2 of 5 mentioned the Notifications icon among the places they’d look. I hadn’t considered putting anything there but it seems like it would be a good idea for future iterations.
Reviews of TinyFlix were generally positive, though not everyone was impressed.
One design suggestion from a usability tester was to make the TinyFlix recommendations look more like the current design for top 10 titles. It might be interesting to test alternate designs like this:
This was a fun, if impractical, thought experiment. One thing that gave me pause, as I worked on this project, is that since Netflix doesn't even allow screen grabs of a film they would probably never agree to something like TinyFlix. As a workaround for the purposes of this project I was able to simulate a Netflix title by using a short film I had just made with my daughter, called The Building Monitor.
Conversations I had with my test participants and a few others led to some ideas for improvements to this feature. First, maybe there is a back end way to share recommendations (and/or TinyFlix) by linking Netflix accounts, without having to use texting. When Netflix first started I recall there used to be a way to share your queue with another user, so maybe a TinyFlix could be sent to a friend that way, and they would see a notification the next time they logged in. It might also be fun to be able to send a message to the person who sent a recommendation, to let them know when you start watching their recommended title.
Finally, for users who just want to send funny clips to people, without necessarily recommending films to them, perhaps there could be a TinyFlix keyboard (like GIPHY) to easily access saved clips from one’s phone
In the end, however, because this student project was supposed to be limited to 80 hours I didn't have enough time left to dig deeper into these possibilities.
View full prototype.
Watch The Building Monitor.