Discovery+
Creating a UX playbook for Discovery+’s streaming partner platforms to increase engagement & revenue
Starzplay
(UAE & KSA)
Overview
CLIENT:
Discovery+
MY ROLE:
UX project lead
Jawwy TV
(KSA)
DURATION:
3 months
BluTV
(Turkey)
Go3
(Baltics region)
Role
I was the lead UX researcher & designer for this project - interviewing 40 participants, analysing the results, and creating the UX playbook. I consulted with my UX director, Aditi Kant, throughout the 3 months of the project. I presented to both Discovery+ as well as their partner platform partners (listed above).
To create a UX playbook for Discovery+ streaming platform partners, to better create awareness & retention through identification of opportunities & pain points - by using the insights of the in-depth interviews, as well as best practices.
Discovery+ is an American streaming service which focuses on factual programming. Outside the United States, Discovery+ is not a standalone streaming service. Instead, it is under an ingest model with other streaming platform providers in different regions. D+ wanted to better understand how to attract more users to watch their content on their platform partners.
Challenge
To conduct 40 in-depth interviews (IDIs) with users across 4 different streaming platform providers (across 4 regions):
Methodologies:
I. Kickoff meeting & stakeholder workshop
In this discovery phase and the kickoff of the project, we hosted a remote FigJam workshop with the stakeholders. Our goal was to understand the business requirements, the users, and the technology and ensure that we align with expectations.
The outcome of the stakeholder workshop was to:
Onboard everyone on the full spectrum of the project
Agree upon communication and collaboration strategies
Become aware of business goals and product vision
Understand the brand guidelines
Discuss assumptions to validate and improve all users journeys
Understand ingest model limitations & current pain points
Establish success criteria and project goals to measure success
II. In-depth Interviews (IDIs)
The primary research objectives were to:
Understand general viewing behavior (e.g. streaming platform preferences, frequency, preferred genres, etc.)
Identify how users generally browse through the partner-specific platform & perform certain actions
Uncover overall Discovery+ perceptions, awareness, & thoughts
Results
While the results varied for different countries, and regions, there were many issues that were common amongst all, and a few findings which were nuanced to the specific country / region. Below are a few quotes from various participants:
“To be honest, I never noticed it [Discovery+] before…”
“How is this [Discovery+ show] playing? … Before it was showing to me that I have to subscribe. I’m really shocked.”
“Wow, this [the Discovery+ landing page] is actually really interesting. I like how clear the categories are, and the images are really nice. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Hmm… I know Discovery channel from my childhood, it was about animals and nature. But now, I don’t know.”
“I’d rather pay 100 AED than pay 50, and then 50. It’s not about the money, it’s the principle. If I am already paying for StarzPlay I don’t want to be asked to pay again.”
“I don’t understand… are these supposed to be movies? I don’t know, I prefer Arabic. This looks very foreign and isn’t my type of content.”
The major takeaways (a very high-level version!):
Many users were not aware of Discovery+ content on the platforms
Users had a misperception of the Discovery+ brand
Users do not want segregated sources of content - instead, they prefer that the content on the streaming platforms are “unified”
Users want recommended content
Users want to see content which is updated regularly
Users do not want add-on subscriptions
Users wants to read content in their preferred language
The Playbook
Once completing the research & presenting the results to both Discovery+ and each of the partner platforms, it was time to create the UX playbook! Using Discovery+’s brand guidelines & templates, I created a complete deck of best practices for streaming platforms in general, but also as a specific guide for how to place Discovery+ content within the platform.
Click here to view the final UX playbook!
Final Thoughts
This was a massive project that I was proud to be a part of.
It was incredibly interesting, given that I needed to balance both business needs (5 businesses actually!), while also trying to balance the best user practices. I gave a total of 10 presentations with 6 different decks!
It was exciting to see so many of my recommendations & suggestions actually being implemented into the streaming platform partners. If given the opportunity, I would have loved to do further usability testing on the updated changes to the platforms, and take a deeper dive into their analytics to see how the user experience could be even further improved.