Does mantra "UI/UX" work?
When creating an OTT service we use a magic spell “UI\UX”. What is it? What does a service need it for? Last year PWC conducted a survey asking users what influences their loyalty to a TV service. Most factors (6/10) appeared to be UX factors like easiness of use, stability of work, simple content discovery, etc.
What is UX (User Experience) design?
UX design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product or a service by taking into consideration needs, limitations and preferences to ensure the best experience for the user.
User experience is how a user feels when using website, mobile application, desktop version, or basically any interface to interact with. It’s multi-layered and hard to grasp, yet crucial for the service success.
What about UI (User Interface) design?
UI design is inseparable from UX. While UX targets optimizing a product or a service to make it easy, effective and pleasant to use, UI focuses on the visual components, sensations and interactivity. A UI designer is responsible for content, information architecture, information interaction and visual design. UI is about everything that provides for a positive user interaction (a button, a different menu, a sound, etc).
When designing a product or a service, you should always take into consideration both, UX and UI. Applying only one of them could lead to major mistakes in the design of the product and not have the expected results for the end-user and consequently, for the provider.
"A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no papier-mache on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success” - Rahul Varshney, Co-creator of Foster.fm.
UX puts your content to work!
What is the use of thousands of hours of content uploaded to your service if the user can’t find it?
A PWC survey on viewer attitudes to content discovery showed that 55% of consumers find themselves looking for something new to watch every week and 62% struggle to find something to watch.
Viewers need to find content quickly before resentment sets in and they head elsewhere. Churn rates for OTT services are phenomenal.
OTT providers need to deliver what consumers want, when they want it, and on whatever they want to watch it on.
So what you should keep in mind when delivering the best UX?
1. Retention and favoritism are created with usability and experience, significantly more so than “loyalty” reward programs like monthly discounts on subscriptions or free trials.
2. Given the apparent limitless amounts of content being offered, a strong user experience lets viewers easily find what they’re looking for or even what they have never thought about looking for!
3. Companies have spent much of their time trying to convince their consumers that they “know them,” while losing sight of what’s important.
4. What consumers need is a user interface that helps and guides them through an enjoyable experience, be it finding new content or making easier for them to enjoy their favorite shows.
Where to start?
♦Amplify content offerings.
♦Own a deep easy discoverable library.
♦Own the customer relationship: become a central platform in how audiences find and consume content.
♦Maximize convenience and focus energy on an easy-to-use search function.
♦Guide content and platform UX decisions by the pulse of your audiences. Remember that data dexterity is critical to the ability of services to differentiate.
♦Go beyond broad genres, and look at nuanced threads within content to make predictions. The platform should recommend content to the viewer that they don’t even know they want to see.