Design for Kats

Context

Watching movies is a pastime enjoyed by perhaps the majority of the world, and Letterboxd is the leading app for those who want to take their film love to the next level by tracking and reviewing the movies they watch, and hearing the opinions of cinephile peers. Its popularity skyrocketed in the past few years particularly within younger generations, and the app’s presence is felt across other social media platforms.

The Problem

And yet, the app that is branded as “the social network for film lovers” has no direct way to share reviews and film opinions within the app. Inherent to appreciating moving art and film is the way it connects humans, it’s only natural to want to connect with others through sharing opinions, interpretations and thoughts about the film. Letterboxd demonstrates this recognition by dedicating a section of its app to articles and reviews written by film critics and journalists. However, I hypothesize that facilitating private message conversations in the Letterboxd app will empower users to create more in depth conversations on films and even potentially increase the circulation of the long form reviews written by contributing journalists 

There is a large potential to facilitate deeper film discussions through closely connected social interactions like direct messages with Letterboxd friends. These features would then redirect users to stay on the app and continue their browsing journey, rather than get sidetracked from sending content through messaging apps outside of Letterboxd. I saw this benefiting three areas:

Research

I developed a research plan in order to define the problem space and understand the user’s current journey for communicating around movies. I wanted to better understand the role of social communication and interactions in Letterboxd and by extension, habits on messaging on social media apps, particularly messaging content from one’s feed

Researching competitors of Letterboxd led to some interesting conclusions. The analysis indicated that while there are many alternatives for the utility of tracking movies and tv shows with similar features to rate and review media, users utilized these competitors differently from Letterboxd. Letterboxd remains the far more popular option, likely due to their social nature that prioritizes the opinions of others and promises greater social prominence.

Of course messaging is a ubiquitous feature across social media apps, but it was crucial to validate how desirable this feature would be when in the context of an app focused so specifically on movies. How might its function need to be more targeted to the ways that Letterboxd users would communicate with each other?

Zooming back out, I was first aware of Letterboxd’s prominence predominantly because of images of movie reviews from the app shared across social media platforms. If I could observe this on a public scale, I hypothesized this could be happening on an interpersonal scale, where friends were sharing entertaining movie reviews to each other in messages outside of Letterboxd. 

But in order to validate this hypothesis, I needed to actually speak to people who use the app

In an effort to understand the unique desires and interests that set a letterboxd user apart from users of its competitors, I developed provisional personas of the types of people who would be using the app, and why.

This helped me get into the the headspace of wondering how a certain user would feel about a messaging feature, and how that would differ from the way a different user would want to use the messaging feature.

After establishing clarity on provisional persona, it became necessary to deeply examine real users in order to understand their experience with Letterboxd, where they have problems or complaints, what works for them, what motivates their use and how their feelings towards Letterboxd align with the hypothesis that direct message conversations would facilitate deeper connection over movies.

The interviews all revealed interesting themes, demonstrating how even a small app with a specialized purpose has a large impact on people’s thoughts and behaviors.

I was interested by the variety across users in the ways that they use the platform. Even so, social connection was a large variable throughout – all participants downloaded it at the recommendation of peers, and many explained that seeing their friends share and review movies that they watched motivated them to stay on the app in order to stay in the know of their friend’s thoughts and interests. A surprising amount of people mentioned that they would like to feel a closer connection with their friends over movies. I was surprised to learn the extent to which viewing friends’ Letterboxd activity is an entry point for people to reach out to their friends. Some mention that they “enjoy seeing the letterboxd reviews of friends, like to come across reviews” saying, “there’s a big appeal to the somewhat organic ‘discovery’ of thoughts and feelings” and would use that as a reason to reach out over text. 

“There’s a big appeal to the somewhat organic discovery of thoughts and feelings”

New York Participant, 24

Nearly all the users reported sharing something they had seen on Letterboxd to a friend, and encouragingly, some users explicitly expressed a desire for a way to directly send reviews or movies to another Letterboxd friend within the app. Some users explained that the current method of sending content from Letterboxd somewhat deterred them from wanting to send it, one explicitly stating it

“would be cool if you could send directly, like a dm feature”

New York Participant, 27

or that Letterboxd is a crucial tool in facilitating movie finds, but the tool is not quite refined.

“When people recommend movies to me, I have to pull up the app and add it to my watchlist, which sometimes feels like a lot of steps” 

New York Participant, 27

The anecdotes confirmed my hypothesis and affirmed that a direct message feature would provide greater benefit to people than using another app to share media, but deeper than that, I was able to understand the thoughts and feelings behind why they share messages, how they benefit, and what they’d like to avoid.

Being able to interview real users helped me develop a user journey map to break down the steps for how they currently carry out the task of sending things from letterboxd.

Comparing that journey to the proposed designs has helped illustrate not only the difference in ease the designs would create, but the reduction of interfaces used and the redirection of behavior to remain on the app.

Wireframing

Luckily, there are many pre-existing design patterns for messaging apps that are efficient and effective at sending content in a message. 

However, in order to ensure that the messaging features were designed specifically with Letterboxd in mind, I drew upon user sentiments and the new user journey as resources. Considerations like ‘adding to watchlist’ to make the journey easier and providing the ability to send blog articles were considerations generated by keeping in mind the specific audience of users and their unique reasons for being on an app for film lovers.

I sketched out low fidelity versions and mid fidelity versions to ensure that the content would fit

Working within a design system 

A crucial part of adding a feature is seamlessly incorporating it into the app’s existing design system. While I was limited by not having access to the typefaces used, I utilized the color palette and approximated the typeface to best match what existed on the app. I looked at the existing components in the interface as a design model to ensure that the new additions would feel seamlessly integrated. I enjoyed infusing more of the branding colors into the interface, as I personally enjoyed the branding color palette and appreciated more opportunities to add a subtle pop of color into the the interface

High Fidelity Mockups

Usability Testing

I recruited 5 people to conduct usability testing of the screens in order to validate that the tasks were understandable and easy to conduct. 3 of the users were unfamiliar with the app and 2 were current users of Letterboxd. The usability was evaluated based on the main tasks I was hoping to complete, such as directly messaging a review and a movie to a friend, and sending a blog post to a friend. 
Overall, the test results were affirming, with every participant able to complete the tasks after at least 2 attempts. The feedback provided gave direction to improve usability and align better with user expectations.

Future Considerations

• Reformatting the content so that it is distinct from the screenshot format
• Greater feedback from the send button to confirm that it has been sent 
• Ability to search through individual conversations for content that was sent user to user. 

Revisions

I reformatted the content of the reviews so that it is distinct from the initial review format, as an added consideration. This thoughtfully condensed the information contained in the review as a living component and reprioritized the rating and the review of the movie closer to the top.

The next revision addressed the need to provide user with feedback that their message has been successfully sent

The next revision addressed the user’s desire to search in individual conversations in order to find recently shared content. My revision created another option for users to find content when they can recall the specific conversation where they received a review or recommendation. I also revised the original search results page to include content that is more relevant to media that a user would refer back to.

Reflection

I enjoyed being able to delve into an app that I love and use often. It was valuable for me to understand how it’s used by other people and how it stands out from its competitors. I can acknowledge that it would seem like a straightforward project to add a feature like direct messages to a social media app, but being able to research how the app is used compared to similar apps allowed me to implement features thoughtfully, supported by evidence of user behavior and sentiments specific to the typical behavior on the platform. Because of the research I was able to conduct prior to designing, I could think more deeply about the unique value proposition the design offers to Letterboxd as a brand and a service.

While designing, I appreciated how the constraints of implementing within an existing design system pushed me to closely examine the patterns and features of the interface. They became the toolbox from which I built my inspiration. This project has encouraged me to think about the optimization that comes from making small changes, and how it transforms the way we perceive products we love for the better.