How I redesigned a movie review app.
5 min read
Letterboxd is a beloved social networking service for film enthusiasts, and allows users to interact with each other through their shared interests in films.
In this case study, my team and I embarked on a mission to overhaul the app, focusing on user interaction and visual design to create a more streamlined and enjoyable experience. This project was completed in six weeks.
Role
Lead UI/UX Designer
Timeline
6 weeks
Tasks
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Rapid Prototyping
User Personas
User Journey Map
Objective
The objective of this user research was to conduct a qualitative analysis to understand why such a large portion of CF users were undecided about their career choices and how CF could better serve this majority, or what we called the “broad middle”, and give them more accurate test results.
Challenges
Here were some of the challenges I encountered:
Finding the right participants
Ensuring a diverse and representative sample of interviewees was crucial. Participants needed to vary in age, industry and salary to capture a broad range of perspectives.Conducting Effective Interviews
Balancing the need to allow interviewees to open up while keeping the discussion focused was a delicate task. I had to ensure that interviewees had ample time to think about their answers without leading them or stacking questions. Techniques such as the Five whys helped a lot.Extracting Key Insights
Identifying relevant insights from diverse interviews required a keen eye for patterns and an ability to distil complex information into actionable findings.
User Interviews & Insights
I conducted in-depth interviews with five participants from various sectors.
Here are some of the questions and research findings below:
The key findings included:
Uncertainty and comfort zones
Participants were generally hesitant about a career switch as it was out of their comfort zone and could result in a change in work-life balance. They felt competent and secure in their current roles but were hesitant to stay due to limited career progression, leading them to consider a career switch.Preference balance
Most participants gave a 70:30 weightage to either a career switch or career advancement. They regarded themselves as uncertain as they deemed this to be an important life decision and wanted to make the right choice for their future.Concerns about starting over
Most participants were worried about the implications of starting from scratch in a new career. The fear of starting over adds to their uncertainty and reluctance to switch or explore new career options.
These insights revealed a common theme: users needed more clarity and support to confidently make career decisions.
Action Items
With these insights and the assertion of my team, I concluded the interviews confident that I had unearthed the key drivers behind user indecision. The recorded interviews were transcribed and the findings were then extracted and presented entirely on FigJam.
To figure out what features could be added to CF, I conducted user testing sessions after each interview. The suggestions and feedback were then collated and I got the team to vote on which features they thought were the most important to work on. Additionally, I created a user persona based on the five participants to help facilitate the design making decisions when it comes to developing new features for these users.
Results
As a result of this project, the team had a better idea of how to better serve the needs of CF users. They are currently figuring out how to provide more resources such as giving users access to career coaches to make themselves more employable. As well as adding new features to CF such as a comparison tool, and additional filters to help facilitate the decision-making process when selecting and pursuing an occupation of their preference.
Here's a sneak peek of the comparison tool feature that I got to work on.
Retrospective
Trusting My Instincts
Speeding up the screening and interviewing process by trusting my gut feelings about participant selection could have saved time. As a first-timer, there was a lot of uncertainty at the beginning of the project and I needed more clarification on the interviewing process.Resource Management
Balancing the use of limited reward vouchers with the need for diverse insights was crucial. Interviewing a manageable number of participants while ensuring diversity proved to be effective and I was able to get the findings that I needed.Collaboration Is Key
Working closely with my team and stakeholders ensured that the project progressed holistically, integrating content strategy and technical feasibility from the start for the features that were suggested.
© Min Ern Koh 2024