Hulu Social is an integrated social tool created to engage users by allowing real time interaction. Hulu viewers can generate comments within any show or movie, and post reviews on all the content they watch. This was created as part of an introductory project to UX/UI case studies while attending DePaul University.
Project Brief
Overview
Hulu is an American streaming platform with over 100 million total viewers. It offers a wide selection of films and TV series from some of the largest networks. With the popularity and creation of more streaming services increasing, the need to engage with the viewers has become more important to ensure subscribers return to the platform.
Task
As the demand to provide current streaming subscribers with fresh and new experiences increases, our team was tasked with creating and implementing a feature within the current structure of the app that we believe would drive user engagement.
Problem
The Challenge
The streaming service industry is one that functions and operates similarly to its competitors. We asked ourselves: what can Hulu offer to increase user interaction while also bringing these subscribers together?
UX Research
Initial Research
The beginning of our research began with understanding what kind of user experience the application invokes. Our team wanted to figure out what we could implement that would not take away from the primary objective of the app. The user goal is to ultimately consume content, but how can we engage the user with the content they are streaming?
Outside of initial application run throughs, we completed base-level competitive analysis. We compared not only other streaming platforms, but social media platforms as well. We felt we could take inspiration and incorporate functionalities from these platforms. Based on internal research, we found that the top mobile apps were social media based. After internal user testing, we came up with these takeaways:
+ All social media apps had some form of interactivity (liking posts, commenting)
+ These functionalities were integrated seamlessly and were not overtly emphasized.
+ A user averages about 20 actions per month within social media apps.
Target Audience
Based on our research, we broke down our user into two categories: Engaged and Observational. After conducting our research, we found a pattern between the different types of users. We were able to consolidate the varieties into these two categories and utilize this as the target audience.
Structure Outline
After our research, we sketched an outline of what functionality we wanted to implement. We decided on creating Hulu Social: a social media extension integrated within the current UI of the Hulu app. Our goal was to allow users to connect and interact with others on the platform. Instead of streaming being a one-way consumption, we allow users to provide feedback on their end.
UI Design
Initial Designs
After mapping out the user flow of the app extension, we began implementing the functionality within the current design. We began with static images to visually represent the user journey, then finalized our designs with a full prototype.
Final Design
After completing the first phase of UI mockups, we decided to update our initial designs to be consistent with the new Hulu look and feel after they re-branded their user interface.
Conclusion
Final Thoughts
As we wrapped up this project, we talked internally to decide what we liked and what could be improved for future iterations. Overall, the feedback was positive, with critiques only in the design of the app extension. We thought that the design could be a little cleaner, as well as expanding beyond placing messages directly within a stream. We thought the possibility of users connecting directly with each other would increase engagement, in addition to more promotion of content variety.
