Redesigning Netflix.
Prioritizing Accessibility for Senior Users.
Skills.
User Research
Visual and Interaction Design
Design Systems
Information Architecture
Timeline.
August – November 2023
Tools.
Figma
Adobe Creative Cloud
Project Overview
Inspired by my Grandmother's struggles with Netflix, I initiated this personal project with one mission: to transform the streaming experience into a seamless and enjoyable journey for seniors.
While you can pick between an adult profile or Netflix Kids, there's currently no option that caters specifically to seniors. In this redesign, I prioritized navigation, readability, and visual clarity.
Keeping it simple
Better feedback, fewer choices. Solely essential and customized components, addressing a current gap in Netflix's offerings.
Unlocking Potential
As of 2018, those aged 65+ spent almost five hours daily watching TV. With COVID-19 reshaping habits, older viewers likely consume even more.
As of 2022, Americans age 50 and older are powering the growth of streaming video in the U.S., representing 39% of streaming watch time.
Interestingly, while older audiences power this surge, it appears that Netflix is seemingly behind Hulu in tapping into this demographic.
Adapting Netflix for this audience, especially considering the global growth of older viewers, could unlock a significant and untapped subscriber base amid the recent decline in quarterly paid subscribers.
User Interviews
01 Feelings
Elderly users are more apprehensive and avoid troubleshooting, hindering their willingness to explore and address challenges in navigating the platform.
02 Visibility
Users can't see rating cards, episode and movie descriptions, and icon descriptions due to font size.
Users are unaware of certain features when they aren't directly in their line of sight, specifically the collapsed navigation bar, features on rotary dials, and informational overlays.
03 Icons
The lack of clarity in icon meanings causes hesitance in navigating Netflix, leading to a lack of awareness of key features such as "My List," "Skip to Next Episode", and expressing preferences through liking or disliking movies/shows.
04 Navigation
Users have trouble comprehending how to get to the navigation bar because it is not a familiar interface layout.
Users have trouble finding episodes due to multiple pop-ups and button presses.
Sketches
Design Systems
Once the usability issues were resolved, I moved on to design the final screens in Figma. My goal was to maintain the visual identity of Netflix with strategic adjustments to font size, emphasis variations of font, icons and descriptions, and rating cards. This approach maintained brand identity while tailoring the design to address the specific needs of the 65+ user demographic.
UI Design
Text and Icon Visibility: Increased text and icon sizes by approximately 50% to enhance visibility for older users.
Profile Selection: Implemented slow pop-up instructions when choosing a profile, aiding users unfamiliar with the process and encouraging profile selection. Redesigned the layout of profile selection to feature horizontal scrolling through profiles. Eliminated the slideshow of featured TV shows/films to reduce distraction and intimidation for elder users.
Homescreen: Enlarged title thumbnails and simplified layout to show only four groups of titles, emphasizing the headers by underlining them. Placing "My List" on the home screen to increase awareness and use.
Rating Cards: Introduced more visible rating cards with familiar ratings (G - R) and rearranged their placement for better visibility, both on the title thumbnails and on individual tv show or movie pages. Used brighter colors consistent with Netflix's rating cards.
Key principles
Navigation Bar: Moved the navigation bar to the top to align with established user expectations, making it easier for them to locate and interact with the navigation elements. Used filled buttons for cursor indication and filled tonal buttons to indicate the current page, eliminating confusion while increasing visibility.
Removed "Categories", "My List", and "New & Popular" for reduced complexity, and added "My Profile," "Help," and "Exit" buttons to enhance user understanding and also offer immediate help.
Search: Simplified the search process by providing a familiar phone keyboard layout, using a hierarchy of elements for easier navigation, and limiting autocomplete options to three suggestions for clarity.
Removed movie/TV show thumbnail titles from the search screen, eliminating visual clutter and potential confusion caused by their presence. This decision aimed to create a cleaner interface, avoiding potential distractions and streamlining the search process for elderly users.
TV and Movie Browsing: Implemented a genre prompt when selecting TV or Movie from the navigation bar, personalizing the search experience. This reduces frustration and improves efficiency by allowing users to choose a genre rather than navigating through titles, row by row, one by one.
Video Player: Enhanced the video player interface with additional media controls when the video is paused. This simplified design ensures users can easily navigate through these controls without any confusion. The linear layout also provides ample space for clear icon descriptions, addressing a significant gap between Netflix and elderly users.
TV Show Description Page: Replaced the vertical rotary dial with an intuitive double navigation bar with essential features.
When hovering over an episode, the thumbnail displays a play button, indicating to users that pressing the episode will initiate playback. This design streamlines the episode selection process by eliminating a separate episode page from the description page, enhancing user experience, and reducing navigation complexity.
Beginning-of-Video Prompts: Inspired by Netflix's "Are you still watching?" prompt, this prompt addresses common issues of confusion among senior users when playing an episode that had previously been started. The prompt ensures users know they're not starting the episode from the beginning, offering options to restart, resume, or skip to the next episode.
End-of-Video Prompts: Like the prompt above, these end-of-video prompts are designed to improve the overall senior user experience by gathering user feedback to improve the Netflix recommendation algorithm and enhance feature usage.
Next Steps & Learnings
Looking back, I would love to conduct additional interviews and user testing to gather more insights and refine my designs further.
Additionally, in redesigning the Netflix interface to be more senior user-friendly, I've learned that navigating Netflix is a huge pain point for seniors. One thing that exacerbates this issue is a user's remote controller.
As I work further on this project, I aim to learn how senior users interact with their remote controllers and design a remote accessible on their smartphones that can connect to their smart TVs.
I'd like to address the challenges posed by confusing remotes and enhance the overall senior user experience on Netflix with features like voice search, typing directly on their smartphones, and providing media controls.
Thank you for reading my case study!
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me!