WELCOME TO THE DISNEY+ REDESIGN

1.0 | INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT

1.1 | CURRENT STATE

Disney+ is a relatively new streaming platform that caters for a wide range of audience. We found that in order to be able to compete in the streaming market against big name brands like Netflix, Disney+ must optimize and improve the experience of its platform.

1.2 | CURRENT APPROACH TO tHE INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

2.0 | KEY ISSUES

2.3 | EXPLORE TAB LOCATION

• Hidden in the search function of the website

• For such a valuable feature, it is too difficult to find

3.0 | USER RESEARCH

3.1 | Initial Findings

For our initial research, we used our team of 5 members as users. Since many of us were unfamiliar with Disney+ (all but one), we consequently subscribed to the service to gain some experience.

Process

1. Account creation

2. Payment process

3. Navigating and viewing the content.

3.2 | Closed Card Sort

Then we used Optimal Workshop to conduct a Closed Card Sorting test and only tested people who were unfamiliar with Disney+.

Key Findings

• Most of the time, users would match the wrong sort of show to its respective Disney+ category.

• “Feel Good Sports” was the most effective labeling as 76% of people placed them 

• “Out of the Vault” had one of the lowest correct placements with an average score of 33%.

3.3 | Tree Test

3.4 | Personas

4.0 | CURRENT APPROACH STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES

4.1 | Strengths

• Appealing Visual Design

• Good choice of photos 

• Easy to find show if you know what you are looking for

• People utilize the streaming service and are loving it thus far

4.3 | Competitive Analysis

Due to the relatively small market of streaming services and the newness of Disney+, a competitive analysis is needed to see how the current market stands. As a team, we looked at the biggest competitor in streaming services, Netflix.

STRENGTHS

• Has many similarities between UI and the organization of shows that Disney follows.

• Carousels and global top navigation bar are how both sites allow users to explore through their show.

• A very consistent categorization system with a detailed filter system of many of its genres.

• A quick easy view of show information makes exploration of their website seamless.

WEAKNESSES

• System design is displayed mainly through Carousels

5.0 | RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Recommendation Summary

• Organization Systems

• Labeling Systems

• Navigation Systems

• Search Systems

• Controlled Vocabulary

5.1 | Organization Systems

5.1.1 | Icons

The first problem we found is that users usually do not tend to go through the full range of Carousels. We want to add icons to let users know and understand what cycle of the carousel they are at and know how close they are to reaching the end.

5.1.2 | Drop Down Arrow

People during our User interviews said that they did not like clicking on the arrow on the side of the webpage to view all the shows under one Carousel. We decided to add a drop-down arrow under each Carousel so that when users click on it, all the content within that Carousel will appear.

5.1.3 | Global Search Function

A global search function was needed to separate it from the explore page. This way, the explore page can act as its own global tab where it features new Disney content.

5.1.4 | User Personalized Watch List

Originally, users would see all movies and series displayed in a random way on the Watchlist Page. By examining other streaming services such as Youtube and Spotify, we decided to add a “create your list” function so that users can make multiple watchlists named by their preferences. Within the users’ own list, movies and series will be organized alphabetically.

5.2 | Labeling SystemS

5.2.1 | Disney+ Original Thumbnails

From our tree test user research, we found that Originals label often misleads people when they were searching for an older (released before 2002) Disney movie. For the Originals tab, we decided to add Disney+ Originals logos to every thumbnail, to make it more intuitive that the term “originals” does specify films specifically made for Disney+ rather than old Disney movies.

5.2.2 | Top-level Navigation

Based on our tree test, we found that the Series tab often misled people. Series is Disney+'s label for categorizing episodes and Disney shorts. When asked to locate where they think to find Avengers: Endgame, some tree test participants first clicked Series and then Action/Adventure. We predict this occurred because they may have assumed the series label indicates that the Marvel series of movies could be found there.

To solve this problem we decided to add an indicator on the top-level navigation to label which page the user is on, so they can always find where they are within the site.

5.3 | Primary Home Page Navigation

5.3.1 | Search Function Location & Added Explore Section

At the moment, to get to Search, the user needs to go to another page. We want to change this location to the top right corner and have the search function to become more integrated and require less friction for the user to encounter.

With this explore section, we are still utilizing a page to display any recommended title that Disney is hoping for the user to watch. This section will give more in-depth options such as popular, coming soon, trending now, and recommended for you.

5.3.2 | Indicator Bar & Description

We are implementing an indicator bar next to the category title of the “Continue Watching” carousel on the home page. This function would allow the user to understand and see how large the carousel might be as well as give the user a better sense of whether or not they want to continue in that category, 

We also included a description under the recommendation tab as people will need to know what these shows are and how they are relevant to the user. Disney+ in its current model lacks this extra type of information.

5.4 | Search

5.4.1 | Global Search

We separated search and explore in order to provide a global search without having users to switch between pages. As a desire for many of our users, this allows for a more seamless experience while exploring new content.

5.4.2 | Optimized Search

At the same time, the search is now better optimized with a consistent search result function. We will also implement a synonym ring that allows users to have consistent results when looking up similar genres such as comedy and funny.

WIREFRAMES + FINAL PROTOTYPE

low fidelity

High Fidelity

LIMITATIONS

• We were only able to collect research on college students.

• We acknowledge that families are a target audience for Disney, but families were outside of the scope of our project.

• Similarly, Disney+ for kids was outside of our scope. 

• We did not look at any other platform besides Desktop.

• We could not change much in terms of Vocabulary control due to the issue being mostly backend. 

• We could not change the recommendation system as it is also a backend issue.

• The algorithms for how shows are displayed/recommended are beyond our control.

FULL DOCUMENTATION