Digistream
- Boon Siang Leok
- Apr 25
- 11 min read
Updated: May 2
Project Overview
Digistream is a smart TV application to showcase Digipen's animations on the School's lounge.
Team Size : 3
Role: UX Researcher
Project Length: 1 month
Design Process
For this project we started off with User interviews which helped us to retrieve some key information like common streaming platforms and some needs of the users. This later pushed us to conduct a heuristics analysis on Netflix and to craft user stories to produce a prototype for our eventual product.
User Interviews
This is the exploratory phase where I would speak to the users to further understand their reasons for using streaming sites, discover what their current concerns might be, learning about what would entice the users and possible needs that the platform may fulfil.
We interviewed 10 users. Each interview would last about 60 minutes and we would be asking questions related to their watching habits and what are some features they like about their favourite streaming platform.
Here is the link for the interview report:
Competitor's Heuristics Analysis
The current platform that we chose was Netflix, due to its prominence in our interviews (5/10 interviewees) and the impact it has upon streaming and binge-watching culture.
Here are some learning points to take note of from Netflix based on Jakob Nielson's
1) Visibility of System Status
2) Match between system and real world
3) User control and freedom
4) Consistency and standards
5) Error Prevention
6) Recognition rather than recall
7) Flexibility and efficiency of use
8) Aesthetics and minimalist design
9) Helps users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors
10) Help and Documentation
1) Visibility of System Status
Real-time feedback: Netflix lets their users know which tab they are currently on by
Bolding and Saturating the whiteness of the tab. Netflix also keeps users informed about what they are currently looking at by having the image way larger than the other images. They also have arrows that tell the user which row they are currently on the list of different shows.
New Content: Netflix lets its users know what new content they have by having a
recently added tab in the title bar. Netflix also lets users know what is most current
popular or the most trending shows that are currently being featured.
2) Match between system and real world
Arrangement of TV shows: Netflix arranges its homepage titles similarly to an actual
DVD shelf. Its title cards are aligned in rows, like how a shelf is in real life. Each layer on
a DVD shelf is represented by the categories on the home page.
Names of Categories: Netflix uses commonly used lingoes such as Trending now,
Binge-Worthy, Award-Winning to help their users find
3) User control and freedom
Rewind Option: There is a rewind option found in the video that is being played on
Netflix. This gives the user freedom and control over how they want to watch the TV
series. This helps when user missed the previous portion or parts of the show, and they
can just watch back that part of the show whenever they want to.
Play/Pause Option: With the ability to pause, this provides the user a complete freedom
and control over which part of the show they want to pause on. This is crucial during
break times and also when users want to go somewhere else and would not want to
re-watch the entire show from the start again.
Enlarge/Minimize Option Provides a way for users to be able to choose the resolution
size that they want to watch their shows on,
4) Consistency and standards
Tile-card array format: Netflix uses a tile-card array to display its content. This format maintains the same size and positions throughout the site, making it easier for users to understand the content.
Bold trendy words: In addition, Netflix uses the same words as big platforms like
YouTube, such as “Trending” ,“Browse” and other keywords that are platform standards.
This adherence to Platform standards ensure that Netflix users will not get confused by
the site buttons and text.
5) Error Prevention
Confirmation Screens: Netflix has a confirmation screen, which prevents errors from
occurring due to wrong or hassled decisions made by the user. Thus, Netflix included a
confirmation option which second-checks the user’s input beforehand, before allowing
users to commit to an action.
6) Recognition rather than recall
Use of Posters: Rather than making the user remember the title of the show, which could be easily forgotten, Netflix makes use of visuals, such as the posters of each of the show to allow for easier recognition as information provided visually would be much
more effective as the users will easily recognize the cast of the show by looking at the visual posters, rather than just having the title of the show, which user would have to recall from their memory in order to know what the show is generally about.
7) Flexibility and efficiency of use
Keyboard shortcuts: Netflix also caters to both experienced and inexperienced users, by providing a web page which lists the keyboard shortcuts, which are easily learnt and flexible as they prove to be efficient. For the inexperienced, it is not too much for them to remember the keys as they are shortcuts and also users can easily refer back to the Netflix webpage on their PC for this keyboard controls guide.
8) Aesthetics and minimalist design
Minimalistic Design: The design of Netflix is minimalistic as it only shows information
that is required for the user to know, it does not overwhelm users with information that is not relevant or required. One such example would be that when users are looking
through the list of shows, it features a short cut scene of the show, followed by the
show’s title as well as the series and episode of the show.
9) Helps users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors
Error Screens: Errors are displayed in plain English languages which can be easily and globally understood by users, and also states the cause of the problem, which we can see from the above example, it appears to be a display problem. It also suggests a
constructive fix to the issue as well, which in the example, asked the user to ensure his or her monitor is HDCP compliant and is not enforced by Airplay.
10) Help and Documentation
Helpdesk webpage: There is a webpage on Netflix PC to allow users to find the answers that they need through a list of questions sorted with categories. Through this help center, users will be able to click on the questions that they are curious or have
doubts on. After users’ clicks on it, they will be directed to the documentation of the question that they clicked on.
Usability Severity Scale
Issues Found
1. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use: Some of the Netflix shows is shown 90 degrees with no option to rotate the video, this causes their users to either flip their monitors or laptops 90 degrees in order to watch their videos efficiently. This was so bad that
extensions had been created on browsers known as Net-flip to fix this issue Severity: 7
2. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design: Chaotic UI interface that results from multiple tile cards resizing at the same time. Severity: 6
3. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design: Identical prominence of page titles and cover text causes convergence and prevents title from standing out, consequently hiding the dropdown sub-genre search box as well. Severity: 5
4. Visibility of System Status: Binary ratings system does not provide opportunity to correctly appraise a TV show or separate good shows from average shows. Severity: 4
5. Visibility of System Status: Lack of any indication that new content has been added to a category, or that any content had been removed from it, causing users to become unaware of changes to their watching categories. Severity: 4
6. User Control and Freedom When a show has been started, it will remain on the ‘continue watching’ list and requires a tedious navigation to user settings to remove it. Severity: 4
7. Consistency and Standards: Horizontally scrolled categories are inconsistent with other major content services like YouTube, which does only vertical scrolling, and is uncomfortable for any device that isn’t a touchscreen device. Severity: 3
8. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use: System requires user to always click on ‘Skip Intro’ for every show manually. Severity: 3
9. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use: System automatically keeps prompting user if they are still watching the show, which is annoying to some. Severity: 3
10. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design: When Netflix showcases various different categories of shows such as Netflix Originals and Award Winning, certain shows like Black mirror, constantly repeats itself again which might make Netflix Users annoyed as they are constantly recommended the same shows. Severity 3
11. Recognition rather than Recall: Whenever a user hovers over a particular screen poster, the information of the particular film covers or overlays the image itself, thus it causes the user to need to have the need to rely on recall to remember how the film
visuals actually looks like. Severity 3
12. User Control and Freedom: User can only scroll and browse the Netflix page via their mouse, and if they were to use the keyboard arrow keys, it does not work. This slows down and delays the process of being able to scroll instantly to see the next information available for the user. Severity 3
13. Recognition rather than Recall: Netflix remembers the shows that you watch halfway, but certain shows still contains end credits which Users might leave the show at without finishing. Netflix’s ‘Watch later’ feature still shows that episode as unwatched. Severity: 3
14. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design: Netflix consists of large icons that occupies a huge portion of screen space for each tile card, which causes the issue that there are too few tile cards shown on screen at any given time. Severity: 3
15. User control and Freedom: Netflix have intrusive audio that starts up from the beginning of a preview. This happens automatically, which can be annoying as any webpage that automatically generate sounds or noise without the user triggering it to
occur will be irritating Severity 3
16. Visibility of System status: Netflix automatically groups users for recommendations based on defined user groups, however the system has no way to display to a user which group they have been assigned. Severity: 2
17. User Control and Freedom: In the front page title, the contents that are displayed to the users have no filters, thus users are not able to filter out low quality contents and only browse through shows that interests them. Severity: 2
18. User Control and Freedom: User’s default mode is the parental control mode, thus they are constantly prompted to use their PIN in order to watch the shows they want to watch. Users may choose to remove this mode from one profile but they would have to
do so for new profiles which might seem annoying. Severity:2
19. Visibility of System status: Netflix has thousands of hidden categories that are not shown to the user, which could be useful but are hidden. Severity: 2
20. User Control and Freedom: Netflix videos does not calibrate itself to the laptop’s or the Monitor’s calibration such as brightness, saturation and contrast which might seem annoying to some users Severity: 2
Usability Issues Breakdown
Issue 2: Very chaotic UI. In this example, the top tile card has show details expanded, and at the same time, Netflix expanded one of the tile cards on the row below. A featured tile card takes the entire width below as well. These tile cards are simultaneously fighting for attention and focus, even though the base tile cards kept a proper consistency when not being shifted around.
Issue 7: The tiles are horizontally scrolled, which causes rows that have partial tiles contrasting against rows that don’t. It is also hard for a user to scroll back to the start of a row.
Issue 18: User’s default is in Parental Control Mode
Issue 3: The way Netflix does titles for TV show categories while browsing is by using a
relatively small white title text on the top left that says ‘TV Shows’ . Beside it is a convenient little feature which is a dropdown menu that lets users skip to which sub-genre of shows they want to browse, instead of having to scroll all the way down.
However, many users are unaware of this feature, as it is not prominent enough. In this
example, the TV show being featured has a cover text that is also white in colour, and the text is bigger and more prominent, causing the TV Shows title to blend in and not stand out as important information, this causes a chain effect which also diminishes the prominence of the small black dropdown menu box, which might be made even more invisible if the cover has a black backdrop.
Issue 19: Users are not shown the hidden subgroups of Netflix, such as Genres as seen from the above image.
Issue 4: In 2017, Netflix replaced its 5-star user rating system with a binary thumbs up/ thumbs down system similar to YouTube’s. This was a bad move as the system did not allow users to accurately rate and appraise a show. There was no opportunity to show a clear distinction between an average but okay show and a good show. This move backfired on Netflix, who tried to keep consistent with large platforms like YouTube, because in application the video content of Netflix requires a more detailed ratings system than YouTube, which does short videos.
Issue 7: The images are in a swiping method rather than the standard scrolling down on
YouTube and other video watching platforms
Issue 15: The video would automatically play by itself, which irritates user as they are not able to have the freedom in selecting whether to play the video at the start.
Issue 6: The ‘Continue watching’ list can be cluttered with shows that users have started but dropped entirely. There are no side options to remove them like how YouTube allows easy playlist removals on the tile card.
Issue 13: One of the shows that have been watched is left during the credits but Netflix system is unable to tell that the user has ‘finished’ the content.
Issue 10: User is recommended ‘Narcos’ ,multiple times as seen in the image above.
‘How to get away with murder’ and ‘Black mirror’
Issue 17: As user is being recommended 2 times on the same shows, and also there is no way to filter out shows that are recommended by Netflix.
Recommendations
UI Recommendations
1. 2. Push the Featured Covers down and add a consistent bar that holds only the page titles in larger text. Using a bar will help users to distinguish the title of the page from the cover content. This will also make the dropdown menu stand out more, and users will be aware there is this feature. Only one single tile card can expand to show basic details when clicked on at any time. If the user clicks on a different tile card, the previous one returns to normal and the new one expands. All tile cards are to remain consistent.
Feature Recommendations
1. Add an auto-orientate function that will rotate video players based on screen
dimensions. Also provide a button to change the orientation of video player while
watching.
2. 3. Reintroduce the old 5-starred ratings system.
A system that tells users when new content has been updated as of a certain date range
would help users know if content has changed. Additionally, removed shows could be
listed in a smaller focus area in case users are searching for them.
4. Have a setting to allow the system to always remember that a user does not want to
watch intros, so they do not have to constantly click it for each show.
5. 6. Tint repeated shows that appears in different categories.
To make arranging of contents better in Netflix by adding features such as “Short shots”
to make it easier to find appropriate contents.
7. For front page titles, add in a filter for user to be able to filter out low quality contents or shows that they are not interested in, so that only contents that are interesting to the
users are being shown on the front page.
8. Add an extra tab under user profile that shows the user what viewer group the algorithm has classified them under so they can tweak their recommendations.
9. In the Netflix’s “My List” tab, add an editing function to it, and a delete function for the
front page as it is inconvenient to delete the “Continue Watching” videos.
10. Have a feature to blue-light filter the videos to enable user to use at night
11. Enable Netflix to detect monitor calibrations and adjust the videos accordingly or allow the user to edit the Brightness, Saturation and Contrast of the videos.
12. Allow Netflix to showcase the tinier genres so that Users can find obscure shows easier.
13. Allow Parental controls to be chosen during the sign up process rather than forcing
everyone to have that feature.
Crafting User Stories
We came out with 10 user stories for the possible scenarios that might happen based on the user interviews that we had conducted previously. These User stories include the following:
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