Disney+

GroupWatch

GroupWatch is a co-watching feature that lets users watch any title on Disney+ with friends and family virtually through the app. GroupWatch will sync the streams so that all you can easily watch together, even when you’re apart. As the design lead on GroupWatch I worked collaboratively with UX research, illustrators, production designers, product managers, both front end and services engineers and executive stakeholders to bring this project to life.

Goals

High level, the goal was to release a feature utilizing our playback synchronization technology. It sounds simple, but an extremely important part of that meant syncing between all platforms that Disney+ is supported on (mobile, web, tv, gaming, etc). While our competitors are releasing features built only on web or chrome plugins, we were the first streaming service to offer co-watching across platforms which is crucial because the majority of our subscribers watch predominantly on living room devices. In collaborating with UX research and product I was tasked with scoping out an MVP that would allow users to invite others to watch any Disney+ title with them in sync. Our KPIs included driving subscriber growth by having hosts invite friends to watch with them, driving engagement with higher completion rates and opportunity for rewatch and driving retention.

process

I started this project in fall 2019, working at the time with one product manager and one UX reseracher. We wanted to test the waters and release something small and quick that would still meet the expectations of users. We started right away putting low fidelity prototypes in front of users to test the invitation flow, single player controls, get initial reactions and identify confusion and usability issues.

Learnings from round 1 of testing
  • Without any onboarding, users had some confusion around the rules and logistics. For this first round of testing we purposely didn’t include onboarding to gauge what users were missing. Takeaway was to focus on contextual onboarding for the next round.
  • Users had a negative reaction to the countdown timer from the first iterations of the lobby. We decided instead to give the host the control to start playback for everyone.
  • Users recognized the practicality of single player controls but wondered how that would impact their experience as a both a host and guest.
  • Everyone wondered how they could interact with other users. What low effort interaction features would we be able to implement before launch (emojis, rating, voting, etc)?
  • Control and Flexibility is important to users (the ability to leave and comeback, scheduling, retaining or sharing playback control, invite users in other countries, etc)
visual design

The goal was to make this feature stand out from the rest of the app and dive really deep into the social aspect of the feature. We decided to go with the concept of ‘social circles’ and give avatars a prominent hierarchy in the lobby. Below you will see just a few of the many iterations we tried.

testing round 2

For the next round we wanted to focus on the invitation process, first impressions of the lobby, emoji reactions, and the post play experience. Within the prototypes we included a 30 second clip to demonstrate other users pausing and sending reactions.

Learnings:
  • Users had strong affinity towards the lobby, especially the avatars
  • Overall the experience was very intuitive
  • Users were pleasantly surprised that you can invite anyone not just other profiles on your account; surprised by the text invite but found it very easy to use
  • Once again mixed feelings about lack of interactivity; this feedback changed a bit when tested again in march 2020
  • The majority of users want to watch on their TV, which presents new challenges to the invite flow
some final screens
next steps

We launched our MVP in August 2020 in every country that Disney+ is live in. Usage has been increasing but we are still working to improve and add on to the feature. Some next steps include improving the TV invite process, adding more controls for the host and adding more interactivity. Below are some explorations I did for joining a groupwatch from a TV.