Netflix | Case Study (for fun) – Corey Deahl

Challenge
Netflix needs a social MVP, providing a platform for recommendations and sharing through their own service.

Research
Broken out into 3 parts; Recommendations, Curation, and Conversation. Each covering what we believe are basic foundations of Social Networking.

Result
The interviews and survey data backed up exactly what the problem was. Users wanted better ways to get and share recommendations.

Research

Two weeks wasn’t a lot of time for survey and interview research, but we were able to take a quantitative approach conducting surveys within the General Assembly (GA) network along with a qualitative approach through interviewing classmates and family members. The interviews and surveys helped to profile and inform the creation of personas, determine pain points with existing alternatives, and understand use cases for the new features. A competitive analysis revealed that competitors are not yet offering such services or functions.

The research identified the target audience for the service and opened the possibility of interactions using a second screen. We developed a clear solution, broken out into 3 features;

Recommendations
Users will have the ability to create a more robust profile with a personalized feed with functions for sending recommendations directly to friends.
Curation
Users will have functions to create (curate) lists of movies. Netflix would have the possibility of rolling out functions for adding commentary in the future. This could be an area for monetization with the ability for on-boarding experts, brands and bloggers alike. Another possibility is the crossover of other sharing platforms like YouTube.
Conversation
Users will enjoy expanded conversation through comments and recommendations, creating community among individuals and (eventually) brands.

After incorporating the solution and user testing on paper and clickable prototypes, people have been extremely delighted by this idea. This is exactly where I think Netflix has a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of an industry transition.