The Watch Party Reimagined:
Understanding Social Viewing
Context
Company & Project Overview
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription streaming service and production company. Launched on August 29, 1997, it offers a library of films and television series through distribution deals as well as its own productions, known as Netflix Originals.
Presently, Netflix does not have a native watch-party feature on either its mobile or desktop applications. A third-party application is he only avenue for creating an online watch-party viewing experience.
The goal of our UX team was twofold:
To create a native watch-party feature for Netflix’s mobile application, thereby eliminating the need for third-party applications
To expand the range of social participation and individual customization offered by existing, third-party applications
My Role
Our team consisted of myself, the lead UX researcher, Amanda Jedele, the informational architect, and Melody Tran, our lead UX designer.
As Lead UX researcher, I was responsible for directing or producing the following deliverables:
Contextual Inquiry
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Competitive and Comparative Analysis
Affinity Map
User Personas
User Storyboard
Usability Testing
Duration
2.5 weeks
Problem
According to recent data, online watch-party viewing increased by 34 % during the pandemic months of March 2020 and November 2021. While Netflix is one of the most popular platforms used for online social viewing, it currently doesn’t have a native watch-party feature for either desktop or mobile, i.e., a feature that users can directly access from the Netflix website or mobile application itself. Instead, viewers must download one of a number of third-party applications and sync it to their Netflix accounts in order to hold Netflix watch parties.
Our challenge was a simple one: why should Netflix develop a native application if there are already a plethora of third-party applications that currently do the job of allowing viewers to hold watch parties? Of course, convenience might be one motivation. But we wanted to press the question even further. How might the addition of a native feature not simply eliminate the need for third-party alternatives, but also improve the watch-party experience at the same time?
Research Process
Contextual Inquiry
To better understand how watch-party applications work, our team began by observing 2 online watch parties consisting of 4, and 6 members, respectively. Fortunately, we were able to recruit both groups directly through associates who were frequent watch-party participants. We wanted to understand how these groups were initiated, the methods they used for selecting a movie or TV show, and the role of conversation in social viewing. Despite the limitations inherent to online observation, our team was able to derive important insights that would provide a foundation for our subsequent research. Three observations in particular stood out:
Both watch parties we observed were preceded by group discussion and disagreement over what to watch and what factors should influence the selection process. Group member explicitly voiced frustration over an inability to visually compare viewing options within the group setting.
The amount of texting during the viewing sessions varied by group. The relative degree of texting correlated with the number of group intermissions taken during the watch party, with an increase in group discussion often resulted in spontaneous breaks.
In both watch parties, viewing was paused at least once to establish or re-establish norms concerning group speaking during the movie or TV show. While tolerating a certain level of conversation was arguably a prerequisite to participation, participants nevertheless negotiated these rules during the sessions as well.
User Interviews
Our next step was to speak directly with watch-party participants. All together our team conducted 12 interviews; 7 with volunteers in our contextual inquiry, and 5 with interviewees recruited through online social viewing forums. Of the 12 interviewees, 8 had at least once used a third-party extension to create a virtual watch-party experience, while 5 actively use these applications and had tried at least 2 different ones.
Affinity Mapping
Our affinity mapping process provided three central insights.
First, when discussing the benefits of a watch party, participants repeatedly emphasized the shared knowledge that derives from a group experience.
“Sometimes I will miss a part of [a scene] or I just want to understand something. So it’s nice to run it past someone else who you’re watching with. ”
At the same time, participants emphasized some dissatisfaction with online watch-parties in their current forms, particularly with the absence of individual customization within the collective experience.
“And one thing that, through my experience, is important is being able to control the volume individually. So if I can’t hear [the movie or show], I can turn up [the volume] on my computer, but that won’t turn it up on everybody else’s computer.”
Finally, users emphasized the importance of accessibility, and a dissatisfaction with the ease of use of current third-party applications.
“I’ve tried it with my sister. We [used a third-party application] on Disney, I forget how; maybe we did the plugin on Chrome. But it was such a hassle to set up.”
Competitive and Comparative Analysis
To put these insights in context, we conducted a competitive analysis of third-party competitors to gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Our study focused on the three main applications: the Netflix Google Chrome Extension, Scener, and Rave.
Of the three, Rave is the only application that offers (a) an integrated interface, i.e., one that merges together the screen and chatbox, (b) chatbox functionality in both vertical and horizontal mode, and (c) voice interaction with other participants (as opposed to only texting).
Moreover, there are three global problems with all three applications.
First, individual participant customization is extremely limited. None of these applications allow for non-hosting viewers to individually enable and disable their voice and chat functionality.
Second, there are limits to shared activities. In particular, no current application allows for interactive group browsing and selection
And finally, while obvious, all three are non-native applications, which entails the extra work of downloading and syncing these applications with a Netflix account.
To learn how we might improve on these applications, we conducted a comparative analysis focusing on Google Meets and Zoom. In particular, we wanted to understand the best practices for creating a collective online space that would expand the range of group activities to include movie/TV show selection.
Personas
We decided that we needed three personas to accurately capture the full scope of concerns with current watch-party applications.
Our first persona, Caroline, represents the desire for social interaction and collective insight.
Our second persona, Patricia, represents the desire for individual autonomy within the watch-party experience.
Our third persona, Graham, represents the desire for increased accessibility.
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Caroline
Caroline needs a Netflix watch-party app that allows her to text with and send emojis to her friends so that she can share insights into movies and TV shows with her friends.
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Patricia
Patricia needs a Netflix watch-party app that allows her to independently mute other party members so that she can decide when to concentrate on the movie or engage with others
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Graham
Graham needs a Netflix watch-party feature that is easy to use so that he can watch concerts with his grandson without having to worry about troubleshooting issues.
User Flows
It was time start conceptualize the tasks involved in our native watch-party feature. To do so, we next created three user flows representing the following courses of action:
A help instruction process that guides a prospective host through the steps involved in creating a watch party
An onboarding process, through which participants are invited into a shared chatroom where they can participate in a group selection
The group selection process and watch-party session itself, during which individual participants can alternatively choose (a) to interact with the group through voice or text, or (b) to disable group text and voice interaction.
Storyboard
As a final research task, we wanted to illustrate how our new watch-party feature actually works in practice. Using our first persona, Caroline, we created a storyboard in which she invites her friend Marc to join a viewing session. Our goal was to develop a picture of how the invitation, selection, and viewing process might look like in a real-life mobile interaction.
Research Insights
Our research provided 5 central insights into Netflix watch-party users.
Self-Knowledge
One of the most interesting insights to emerge was the way in which users saw watch-party viewing as a way to understanding their friends, and indirectly, themselves. A number of participants remarked how they couldn’t help noticing that their watch-party experiences caused them to see their friends in a new light, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. At the same time, the different reactions of their friends to scenes and storylines made viewers reevaluate their own moral intuitions and preconceptions.
Collective Insight
Users were quick to share that a large selling point of the watch-party experience is the collective insight that arises from multiple perspectives. It could be something as simple as someone explaining a scene to another, or as involved as a new interpretation of an ending that arises from a post-viewing discussion.
A Standard of Taste
The influence of watch-party chatter extends beyond an individual viewing session. The final comment in a group discussion may be the impetus for an entirely new series of watch events. Group discussion shapes members’ preferences of what to watch going forward. Social viewing is a way of creating a shared criteria of taste and a process of applying those criteria to new movies and shows.
Individual Autonomy
For all the benefits of the social viewing, members also want to retain the space to be autonomous viewers, i.e., viewers that can chose to have their viewing experience unimpeded by other group members. The benefits of social viewing only extend as far as its participants willing share in the experience.
No Hassles
Watch-party viewing is, most of all, a fun and relaxing activity. Similar to the reluctance one might have towards hosting a live party due to the organization it requires and the clean up involved afterwards, people are reluctant to use watch-party applications if they are too much of a hassle to operate.
Design Recommendations
These insights resulted in 3 main design recommendations. Our final prototype can be viewed in the ‘Results’ section below.
Group Discussion & Selection Room
Drawing on inspiration from our comparative research, we decided that the centerpiece of our design would a group chatroom that preceded any particular viewing session. In our eyes, a group chatroom is a way to expand the scope of social interaction by allowing for a group selection process to take place prior to the viewing event. Individual members can freely discuss and exchange ideas, rather than have to rely on a host to preselect the movie or TV show for subsequent sharing.
Voice and Sound Controls
Central to creating a space for individual autonomy and customization was developing voice and sound controls that allow individual viewers to set their own viewing preferences, without having to rely on a host to do it for them or to grant permission.
Help Resources and Icons
In addition to our overall design, we tackled the issue of accessibility in two ways: by ensuring that our watch-party feature comes with an easy-to-understand, and easy-to-access, help section; and by ensuring that our icons are consistent and easy to interpret.
Testing
Icon Testing
Our feature required the addition of several new icons to the Netflix mobile application, including the addition of a watch-party icon to the central navigation. To make room for it, we decided to move the search icon to the top right corner.
We conducted an icon usability test with 8 users to ensure that our new voice and sound icons, which we created to enhance individual customization, were easily understood upon first use.
Usability Testing
We tested our initial prototype on 7 users, which led to a number of minor but significant modifications. Ultimately, users found our feature to be easy to use and a substantial improvement on third-party approaches.
Results
Final Prototype
Impact and Implications
We achieved our goal of eliminating the need for third-party extensions while also expanding the range of viewer interaction.
We believe that the introduction of a central chatroom could even result in new types of watch-party experiences. General chatrooms could form the basis for a ‘Netflix Neighborhood’, a forum in which Netflix users could join watch-party events based on genre or interest rather than simply prior acquaintance with other group members.
