Netflix IA | Arianna Fu Portfolio

Netflix IA Redesign

The Netflix Information Architecture project is a personal project to explore the possibilities of information architecture.

Netflix is the world's leading Internet television network with over 117 million members in over 190 countries enjoying more than 125 million hours of TV shows and movies per day, including original series, documentaries and feature films. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments.

Netflix contains countless contents, how to lead users to find what they want is a challenge. I curious about what makes the user feel Netflix is well organized and where do they want to improve as well.

Design Process

I create ten common tasks for Netflix users both potential and existing. These tasks aim to understand where do users lost in most common tasks or functions. Besides, this will help me to understand who is the target users of Netflix.

I choose the interview and survey as my research method. The in-person interview can help me to collect first-hand accounts of experience, opinions, attitudes, and perceptions in a qualitative way. After four interviews, I moderated my questionnaire, and conduct an online survey which can collect many data in a short time without regional restrictions.

10 Common Tasks

Sign up for membership
Sign-in account
Update personal information and payment information
Change default language
Browse Movies/ TV series with the navigation system
Watch Movies/ TV series
Give feedbacks to Shows (Like or Dislike)
Turn on subtitle
Add/Manage profiles
Add Movies/ TV series to the personal list

Survey Results

After analysis of the survey results, I get some insights that can help me to understand Netflix Information Architecture.

Netflix builds royalty from members effectively.
Users watch one movie or show each time for 1-2 hours.
Users watch a movie during leisure time. Every week they spend 5 hours on Netflix on average.
Netflix has a strong advantage that their products have a wide range, it helps Netflix attract users without any limitation of gender, ages, occupation.
Even Netflix features offering its services via mobile devices. Home is still the primary location for users to watch. Considering constraints for viewing on mobile devices when iterating new version.
Users love that they can set languages as their preferred ones. However, they can find where to set up unless they start to play the video.

Persona

I then created a persona based on my findings. The persona helped empathize with the user as I proceeded with the redesign.

Tree Testing

I discovered many usability opportunities from the tree testing. For example, only 14% of test respondents were able to find “Subtitles,” which was one of the top three items they wanted to use on the Netflix website.

Card Sorting

I conducted in-person and online card sorts to learn more about users' mental models, nomenclature, and where they would place certain items.

Here are some insights that I get from the card sorting test.

“Unsure category” is a good indicator that showing users don’t know how to organize them, or how to name them.

“Top Picks for you” is the card being placed into different groups every time. This card should be more specific.

2 users named a group “My account”, 2 groups contains 5 same cards and 1 different card which is “Top picks for you”.

Users understand “Features” in a totally different meaning. Features of contents(TV shows or movies), or feature functions from the website.

Sitemap Redesign

Based on my user research, I sketched and diagrammed new ideas for a revised site.

Sitemap redesign idea A

Sitemap redesign idea B

My plans kept the horizontal format of the global navigation but refined the number of choices users faced, consolidated redundant information, and increased findability for key user needs.