Design of "Watch Later"
Platform: Mobile App, iQIYI
Operation system: iOS, Android
Duration: 3 months, 2017.03~2017.06
My Role: Product designer
Key words: Demand exploration, Demand definition
INTRODUCTION
iQIYI is the biggest online video service provider in China now, about 200 million people use the APP everyday. It offers diversity videos for people to watch, such as TV plays, movies, cartoons and so on. It also offers some extensive business, such as comic books and online games.
My role
I was the product designer and responsible for this project---New function.
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User research, the process includes: write the user interview guideline and interview users with design department
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Define the demand and discuss its necessary with our product team
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Study technical feasibility with developers and the product designer who is in charge of the player
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Output Wireframe and low-fi prototype
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Design the logic flow
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Output the Hi-fi prototype and Product Requirement Document(PRD)
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Explain PRD to developers, testers and UI designers; Track the process of development
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Monitor the performance after it was launched
Problem statement
Recently, by monitoring users' feedback, we found two problems, almost at the same time, increased more than 50%:
Users cannot find the videos that interested once they missed it
Users cannot find the “Collection” button when they need to mark some videos
Definition of "Collection"
History: “Collection” function has long existed in iQIYI without updates during recent years.
Location:
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The add button is embedded in the player, which means people only can use it when they enter the player.
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The collection list is in users' account
Goal: Help people collect videos or comic books they are interested in, and also can be reminded of video updates.
Therefore, people already see the contents when they add them in the collection list.
User research
Communication way: Phone, interview
User source: From the backstage of our "Feedback system"
Number: 16
Background: Students(16~21 years old), staffs( governments, Tech companies)
Duration: 20~30 minutes
Topics:
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How do these users use “Collection”, what do they think about this function
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The scenario that users face these two problems
User identities and usage behavior pattern
Findings of the interview
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The reasons of increase of the feedback above
A new channel was launched
recently
A short video channel, without offering function for people to mark videos
Traits of the new channel:
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Video are usually less than 10 minutes
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VV(video view) tens of millions
Video updates easily miss
The recommended contents, especially short videos, update in real-time, people easily miss some videos
The role of 'Collection' is not clear
It can be used to follow video updates, or collect videos or books
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Users' behavioral patterns
Niche demand
Watch video via the cellular network
Watch video in fragmented time
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“One-off consumption”: people watch short videos once
Collection
Watch video via WiFi
Exploit a block of time to watch video
90% of users collects less than 5 videos
Watch collection more than once
Other features:
1. Users prefer to put updating videos in the "Collection", because it can remind people the updates in real-time
2. Users preferred to download their favorite videos instead of collect it
Persona
Ideation
Brainstorm
I brought what I found in the user research to the product evaluation meeting of our product team, considering the extremely complicated function framework iQIYI App (as one function’s change will effect many other unknown functions or bottom-level structures of database), two most possible solutions were put forward:
"Add a new function for the short videos channel"---
• The increase of problems is largely related to the appearance of the new channel
• “Collection”（收藏） in Chinese means you preserve something you are really cherish, it isn’t match the above situation
• The extensibility of “Collection” function is not ideal as it has already involved in several scenarios
• Short videos will play an important role in the strategy of company
"Increase a new channel"---
• It can rightly provide the capacity to add some videos to a list for people
• As familiar with “Collection”, users will soon accept it and know how to use it
By analyzing the user behavior, we discovered that the targeted user scenarios are quite different from scenarios of “Collection”.
For increasingly users who like to watch short videos, and also make sure people can use functions in the App easily. Finally, we decided to choose the second scheme: add a new function—“Watch Later” in the short video channel.
The design of “Watch Later” has three features:
• Add videos quickly: users can add short videos to “Watch Later” without opening Players to look details of the videos
• Watch short videos at one time: users can enter into a special player which will play all the short videos according to the video list in “Watch Later”
• Be convenient to manage: people can check the video list and delete the videos in a batch
WIREFRAME
HI-FI PROTOTYPING
Landscape mode
conclusions and Insights
In fact, in the progress, we have arranged priorities of the problems we faced and simplified them, narrowing down the scale of problem we need to solve.
• Short videos or all the videos?—Short videos, since 75% of users’ complaint related to short videos
• Watch these videos just the once or repeatedly?—Just the once, in our interview 90% users expressed that they would not watch twice.
So far we just solve the main problem aimed to these increase of feedback, but through this research we find other important problems that we need to deal with in the future:
• The definition of “Collection” is not clear: It covers several user scenarios, such as following updating videos, or collecting diversity types of contents, like videos or books, makes people confused. In the future, we will consider redefine “Confusion”, maybe by redesigning the use path or the page layout;
• The range of “Watch Later”: we will depend on the feedback and the data indicator—Daily User Number/DAU(Daily Active Users of APP) , Conversion Rate( views number/the click number of “watch later”button at "Me" page)—-to decide whether extend its application scope to all the type of videos