UX/UI redesign case study — RTE Player
Gathering project requirements & User research
In this project, our overall goal is to improve the RTE player’s user experience and how we differentiate from its competitors by exceeding users’ expectations, implementing constant fresh personalised content, and easy to navigate through with a straightforward interface.
Appendix. Project goal
“Hands down the worst app ever”
— From an online review
Choosing an area
Recent years, on-demand video streaming service changed customer behaviour with its convenience — choosing contents whenever and wherever they want to watch. Since Covid-19, streaming apps usage has been increased, and there was massive frustration on RTE Player service with its lack of feeding the audience’s interest — the key elements of the VOD service.
User research methods
● App store reviews, article reviews, competitor analysis
● User interview, observational study, heuristic analysis, Survey
● RTE TV guide, RTE monthly report
To gather and understand our users’ goals, preferences, differences, and their experience with a platform, we chose research methods suitable for gathering data on behaviours, attitudes, and emotional responses to watching behaviour. Qualitative and quantitative research conducted as above to get various RTE Player’s problem areas and find potential opportunities to explore.
Followed Norman’s 10 Usability Heuristics Analysis (Jakob, 1994) and other research outcomes showing that RTE players lack of personalisation, painful advertisements and defined users watching behaviour — background watching, short usage time, planning watching list and getting a recommendation from friends. This means TV and streaming apps future will depend on its unique contents — support local/Irish made contents. That is a prominent distinctive feature on RTE players and it would be the critical attraction and opportunity.
Problems areas:
● No personalisation
● Advertisements
● Searching/navigation
● Profile
Appendix. Initial group activity /Product brainstorming and initial research / Saturn comprehensive research / Full desktop research methods and insights
Competitor research — Direct and indirect
We benchmarked our competitors’ personalisation experience — multi-user accounts, parental control, rating and reviews — searching and browsing experience that we implemented for our new Information Architecture on the navigation system. Studying social behaviours — sharing and connecting with friends are essential experiences of our target market. We needed simple cues to make our users come back — ‘Notifications’ and ‘Autoplay trailers’ trigger our users into action: Passive watching experience.
Take Away from competitors -
● Socialising — sharing & live chat
● Notification
● Autoplay trailer
● Personalisation & Recommendation system
● Rating and Reviews
● Onboarding experience
● Ease of Use
Opportunities:
● Give the user what they want — A personalised experience
● Give the user the control — Intuitive & user-centric navigation system
● Values — Efficiency & usefulness
● Irish/Local made contents
Appendix . Full competitor analysis
Define the target market and HMW statement
We broaden our perspective in HMW statements to explore wild ideas to open up a wide range of possible solutions for brainstorming. The questions held a certain level of ambiguity but not to have specific design solutions to fulfil our users’ needs. However, we are still trying to construct problem statements focused on — boosting the RTE Player usage as a returning user with its personalisation — to be manageable in an ideation session.
Top 3 HMW problem statement -
● How might we encourage more frequent and longer usage of the RTE Player?
● How might we extend RTE Player’s scope of the target audience?
● How might we create an efficient way for parents to amuse their children with the RTE Player?
Appendix. HMW statement & stakeholder / Priority grid
Parental control on VOD services — Extreme user
“Parents around the world are getting desperate
to keep their kids occupied .”— Anonymous, from article review
Since Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown in March 2020, VOD streaming service usage has increased enormously. Results of user interviews — many parents use the streaming service for educational and entertainment sources to fulfil their kids’ interest ever since. In that context, parental control with a personalised profile is the key feature related to our goal. Of course, RTE Player offers parental control and kids’ mode, but no separate account setting, personalisation, or even kids-friendly UX/UI against competitors.
Insights -
● Limit screen timing, use parental control
● Customise the age-based content ratings
● Entertainment, educational source — new things & diverse cultures
● Kids friendly category name
● Supply alternative layout options
Appendix. Full Parental control research / Persona & Empathy map / Lucy Customer journey map & JTBD
User journey ‘As-is’ to ‘To-be.’
A wide-angle of areas were investigated in the empathy phase. We prioritised and synthesised our findings on Priority grid to define our critical findings for the users’ ‘to-be’ journey. However, most of the outcomes overlapped towards our main problem areas — personalisation & better browsing experience. It led to our key areas of JTBD statements for the design development phase and primary persona — Derrick: single, young professional, male. Derrick stands for our primary user behaviours that want to switch off and find something interesting to watch with little effort to relax.
Appendix. Derrick Persona / Scenario & storyboard / Evaluation board
Pain & Gain point from Customer journey ‘as-is’
● No personalisation — history, recommendations, saving list
● Better navigation & browning experience
● Advertisements
● Socialising — rating & sharing experience
JTBD(Job To Be Done) statement key areas
● Quick browsing
● Socialising
● Education
● Rating
● Catch up
Move on
“How might we keep users coming back?”
One of the most significant pain points of RTE players is advertisements. Subscribe feature for premium service was one solution; however, users would not convince it. We focused more on passive watching experience and personalisation in the ideation process.
Appendix. Customer journey map ‘as — is’ draft / Final version / Job to be done / User journey ‘to-be’ / ‘To-be’ User cycle
Reference
Dam, R. F., & Siang, T. Y. (2020, September NA). Define and Frame Your Design Challenge by Creating Your Point Of View and Ask “How Might We”. Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/define-and-frame-your-design-challenge-by-creating-your-point-of-view-and-ask-how-might-we
Fogg, B. (2020, NA, NA). Fogg Behavior Model. Behaviour Model. Retrieved 2020, from https://behaviormodel.org
Gibbons, S. (2019, July 7). Dot Voting: A Simple Decision-Making and Prioritizing Technique in UX. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved Dec 08, 2020, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dot-voting/
Sam, S. L. (2016, June 2). Nir Eyal: The Psychology of Building Addictive Products. Startup Grind. https://medium.com/startup-grind/nir-eyal-why-you-are-addicted-to-facebook-slack-pinterest-468a86eb562
Klement, A. (2013, November 12). 5 Tips For Writing A Job Story. JTBD.info. https://jtbd.info/5-tips-for-writing-a-job-story-7c9092911fc9
Ogle, D., & Bloodworth, A. (2014, September 15). Persona Creation. Fluid. Retrieved October 13, 2020, from https://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Persona+Creation
Priority Matrix. (N/A, N/A, N/A). Prioritisation Grid: A Brief Introduction. Priority Matrix. Retrieved 2020, from https://appfluence.com/productivity/prioritization-grid-brief-introduction/
