HBO GO
How will the user experience of HBO Go function in the near future?
This is a class project.
THE PROJECT
Redesign the near future user experience of HBO Go.
PROBLEM
HBO Go’s current interface is lacking in interface functionality and therefore requires users to put
in work to search and discover shows.
SOLUTION
Improve the interface functionality and efficiency of the search feature.
TIMELINE
5 weeks
SURVEY RESULTS
ASSUMPTIONS
Before conducting the survey research, we generated three assumptions about HBO Go users: users are likely to search for recommended shows often as it is of value to users, users use HBO Go primarily to discover shows, and users primary search method is What’s Popular.
KEY FINDINGS
The primary purpose of HBO Go is to discover content to watch.
Search is the most important feature of a streaming service.
The primary users of HBO GO are between ages 18-25 (target audience)
The most common method to discover shows is via genre and what’s popular.
Users value what shows are recommended to them.
Netflix is currently HBO Go’s leading competitor.
After conducting survey research, we reviewed our key findings to determine the validity of our assumptions. We validated assumption 1, as we found that users do value recommended shows. We then validated assumption 2, that users use HBO Go primarily to discover shows, rather than search for ones they have seen (60%). However, although discover is the primary purpose, we found that 36% of users use HBO Go to watch shows they have already seen, which we decided was a significant amount of users, and brought our attention to the search feature, as users search to find specific shows. We then invalidated assumption 3, as we found that the most common search method is by genre (54%), rather than What’s Popular (39%). Because 39%, slightly less than half of users, search via What's Popular, we determined that the What’s Popular search method is how many users use HBO Go, and thus we should focus on the function of it in our redesign, in addition to genre.
USABILITY
Our next step was to determine pain points, areas lacking in usability, in the current HBO Go interface, which we used in setting goals for the redesign.
Search keyboard is challenging to maneuver
Lack of consistency in categories and navigation
Difficult to distinguish categories from each other
Due to the lack of interface functionality of the search feature in addition to the 36% of users who use HBO Go to search for shows, we decided the search feature was one of our main focuses in our redesign.
COMPETITOR RESEARCH
CONCEPT EVOLUTION
After conducting surveys, determining pain points, and researching HBO Go’s competitors, we further developed our plans for the HBO Go redesign through asking questions and exploring possible solutions, followed by testing the solutions and gathering user feedback.
Competitors already have “What’s Popular”, so how can we further engage users in HBO Go, and bring it into the future?
From conducting interviews with streaming service users, we found that users often times don’t know what to watch and therefore put in an amount of time into searching that leads them to feel dissatisfied with their entertainment experience. Users want to be entertained while using HBO Go.
How can we make the search process feel effortless to users when they don’t know what they want to watch and will this solution reduce the amount of time it takes for users to select a show?
After redesigning the content display and the search feature, discovering was still taking a considerable amount of effort from the user because they were unsure of what to search for.
What the user can tell us: Users might not be able to tell us what they want to watch, but what if they could tell us how they feel?
During usability testing, if users weren’t sure what to watch or search for, we asked them if they could tell us how they feel, or what they feel like watching. We found that most users, 9 out of 10, could tell us how they felt when we asked, and then following, were able to answer “What do you feel like watching?”. Some answers were “I feel stressed and want to watch something lighthearted.”, and “I’m feeling energized and am up for something intense and maybe even dark.”.
Our goal was to find out what users could tell us about what they want or feel to help us understand what would make them feel entertained. We found that most of the answers fit common streaming service categories and genres.
Add an aditional method of discovering shows that might help users decide what to watch. Users can search by genre, What's Popular, and by Mood.
