My Role
Experience designer/creative director: focusing on a holistic user journey from initial user acquisition to retention through a seamless flow/ visual identity of the Likewise TV product.
Credit goes to: UX/UI Designers Israel Lemus & Calum Clark - as well as a small team of developers.
Timeline: 2-3 months
Credit goes to: UX/UI Designers Israel Lemus & Calum Clark - as well as a small team of developers.
Timeline: 2-3 months
Problem
People were getting great TV & movie recommendations from the mobile app, but they didn’t have an easy way to access their watchlist on their smart TV or desktop.
This was a big opportunity to reach new customers and expand the Likewise ecosystem to help users curate their favorites and watch them from anywhere.
This was a big opportunity to reach new customers and expand the Likewise ecosystem to help users curate their favorites and watch them from anywhere.
Likewise Mobile App: Today, Community and Saves tabs
Mobile App: Today Tab
Mobile App: CommunityTab
Mobile App: Saves Tab
Research
Our tight timeline of 2-3 months caused us to leverage existing data and customer feedback from the mobile application. One requirement called for a lean-back experience similar to the CTV app so users would have a 'Friday movie night' experience from their tablets and computers as well.
After synthesizing the data and feedback from initial qualitative and quantitative testing, our users made it clear that the form factor was restricting consumption. These key insights and constraints allowed us to focus more on building a user-friendly single player experience that also leant well to community driven individuals.
How would we achieve this? Deliver on the promise of personalized recommendations by building a personalized and universal watchlist as the main launchpad for the experience. We would also focus on the ease of discovery and surface community-driven recommendations as the cherry on top of the holistic experience.
Personas
With the goals and primary hypothesis in sight, we collaborated with our cross-functional business development and marketing partners to strategize user personas.
Likewise TV users are:
Likewise TV users are:
New customers that are not aware of the Likewise brand, but are heavy streamers.
TV and movie influencers that create sticky review and recommendation content. This would help the business and market the brand.
User's that love editorial and niche community engagement.
Likewise TV initial user journey
Primary Flows
From our research and personas, we focused on four key flows for both the TV app and the web. Throughout the process we understood, there were would be constraints on the flow based on the platform.
For example; we knew comments would only be a read only feature on the TV app but we could leverage our robust collection of original content as an organic selling point for the Likewise mobile and web products.
Below are the major flows we worked out with the team and stakeholders:
Registration
Personalization
Core Actions
Search
Registration
Personalization
Core Actions
Search
Onboarding
The top of the funnel is a crucial point in the user journey for conversion. In an effort to save time and resources, we leveraged the mobile onboarding flow as a starting point. Because web and mobile have different intuitive user paradigms, we knew onboarding would need optimizing to convert more incoming, web-first users.
An onboarding case study is coming soon!
Exploration
After a few rounds of approval process of all the major flows, we began exploring the architecture and experience. We used the CTV product as a source of inspiration since an MVP already existed which allowed us to adopt learnings onto the desktop version.
A notable challenge we kept in mind was how people engage with web formats in a different way than CTV, which would require refining the user-flow and core actions to accommodate user expectations.
Likewise CTV App: MVP
We would focus on improving the experience by:
- Optimizing the interface for web.
- Allowing personalization by streaming service.
- Building a cohesive navigation to the CTV platform.
- Defining simple core-actions based on user feedback and needs.
- Building a clean and elevated visual language to unify brand across the board.
Wireframes and Components
We started creating low-fidelity wireframes for our main use cases. We also started creating an inventory of the components and began building the design system.
Major Key Screens
Header/nav
Carousels
Item details
Profile
Watchlist
Major Key Screens
Header/nav
Carousels
Item details
Profile
Watchlist
Low-fidelity wireframe samples: Mobile & Desktop
Iteration
Initially we optimized the interface design to utilize web paradigms that would be intuitive for a web user.
Mid-fidelity wireframes : Mobile & Desktop
Iteration: Home Mobile
Iteration: Menu Mobile
Iteration: Item Detail Mobile
Iteration: Comments Mobile
Iteration: Home Desktop
Iteration: List Detail View Mobile
Round 2 (Navigation)
We went through a couple of rounds of feedback from the leadership team to make sure we aligned with their goals.
Left Navigation Styles
Iteration: Left Navigation 1
Iteration: :Left Navigation 2
Round 3 -Item Preview Card
We also presented a few options for the preview card on desktop when a user hovers over a title.
We worked through multiple preview card iterations. The focus for MVP was to make it clear for users to watch it, rate it and or save a title.
*note* Core actions need to be optimized for ux
Preview card mocks
Edits were done on the preview card to support automatic trailer play and minimise cognitive overload.
V2 Preview card w/ Trailers
TV App Prototypes
We presented the navigation interaction for the TV App to the development team and leadership team to make quick gut checks along the way to keep things moving.
Visual Language Definition
I focused on elevating the visual language to unify the brand across the board.
Check out Likewise TV Style Guide.
Check out Likewise TV Style Guide.
High Fidelity Designs
Final MVP designs were developed, tested and optimized for release.
Results and Learnings
After launching the product in the beginning of Q2, we ended the quarter with an increase of 50% active users and an increase of 66% registrations to the Likewise ecosystem. One big area of opportunity we found was optimizing core actions and personalization to retain users even further.
