Reimagining the content discovery experience
Context \
New experience
for browsing
New experience
for searching
New experience
for switching
get there?
Discover \
To have a big picture of the project, I started to study the project from three perspectives: target users, system's front end (the product), and system' back end (database and CMS).
In addition, the information I collected in this stage can be powerful supporting materials to persuade stakeholders in the following stages.
Studying the target users: TV users
(1) User state: Being relaxed and lean-back
(2) Primary activities: Discovering and enjoying videos
(3) Users and devices: Relatively long distance; Interacting through remote controls
Mental models for content discovery
I, based on institutional materials and desktop research, learned how users select their interested videos:
(1) Align with preferences: categories, genres, description and etc.
(2) Popularity: are the videos trendy?
(3) Continue watching
Prior user research reports
Studying TCL Channel from the front end: system issues and users' pain points
The most straightforward ways to figure out experience issues are to walk through the whole system and collect users’ feedback.
Therefore, I conducted the heuristic evaluation and reviewed the user research reports.
Part of heuristic evaluation form
Studying the system from the back end: constrains
To know the system in depth, I reviewed the media library, so I understood how the video resources were saved and what metadata I could display for users.
Backend systems and stakeholders
Analyzed and prioritized metadata with stakeholders
Communication with stakeholders: feedback from various perspectives
At work, other stakeholders can always give me lots of insights, so I discuss with PMs, content strategists, and engineers to solicit feedback:
Define \
In the discovery stage, I collected various information, so I synthesized and prioritized insights to convert broad project goals and the business goal into specific design goals.
(P0) Improve the browsing experience.
(1) Most users are browsing users.
(2) There was significant room to improve the browsing experience based on user feedback and prior heuristic evaluations.
(P1) Improve the searching experience.
(1) Searching is a secondary use case and is very important for users with specific videos in mind.
(2) However, the platform did not have high traffic for searching, so the design goal had the secondary priority.
(P0) Optimize the flows of reaching playback pages.
(1) Optimized user flows enable users to start watching videos efficiently.
(2) Because users tend to continue watching (based on user research), more users landing on the playback pages can lead to longer streaming hours (a core metric).
Solution \
Easier decision-making
through more information
Browsing different pages
through sticky navigation
Predictions lead
to less clicks
Digital and physical shortcuts
to optimize user flows
Recommendations
for quick re-selections
Impact \
For the product: improved the key metrics and user engagement.
(Increased the conversion rate from the homepage to video page by 25%.
(2) Increased the streaming hours by 23%.
For business: achieved the business goal and increased the ads avenue.
Because revenue was one of my team’s goals, when I designed I need to consider it. The play button on the homepage could be a CTA and the recommendations can let users stay at the play page longer, which can improve the playback time and then increase the revenue.
For the team: increased colleagues’ work efficiency and enhance collaboration.
1. Because of the new design of the homepage, content strategists can spend less time searching for a poster that has extra text information.
2. After auditing the media library, I revised the API document so the third-party content providers can understand what metadata is necessary for us and what is just optional.
3. I wrote experience reports about TCL Channel on Roku OS and Android OS, and made presentations to share with teammates, which helped PMs find what we can refine in the following product iteration.