Focuses on adding a potential feature to the pre-existing mobile app. This feature allows users to create watch parties on Tiktok to increase engagement.
Overview
What if we explore ways for viewers to watch videos with their friends in real time so they can see/hear their reactions and spend quality time together.
My Role
Tools
Researcher
UX Designer
Maze, Figma
Google Forms
Timeline
Overall: 1 Month
Research: 2 Weeks
Design & Testing: 2 Weeks
Background
TikTok is an app that focuses on short-form videos and is known for its personalized content feed. Due to its popularity, the platform fosters trends and viral content, which impacts popular culture and entertainment. TikTok's success can be attributed in part to its emphasis on user-generated content and the sense of community it fosters.
To increase the sense of community, a new feature that allows users to form watch parties with friends could be beneficial.
So what’s the problem?
Many social media platforms want its users to share videos with their friends, increasing overall engagement. The current TikTok model allows users to send videos to friends, but that's pretty much it.
There is not a lot of user interaction between friends and TikTok feels like a solo experience sometimes.
How do we solve the problem?
I want to implement a feature that allows users to create watch parties with their friends. This allows users to watch TikToks with friends in real time. Having this option will motivate users to increase their engagement.
Determining the Goals
User
Social interaction: Users would like to have more ways to connect with friends.
Shared experience + Community building: Users want to make the TikTok experience more collaborative and engaging.
Content discovery: users would like to be exposed to new content and trends they might not see scrolling just their feed.
Business
Increased user retention: users are more likely to stay engaged and spend more time on TikTok.
User acquisition: a watch party feature can attract new users to the platform and word-of-mouth promotions can contribute to organic user acquisition.
Differentiation from competitors: this feature can help TikTok stand out in the competitive social media market.
Discovery
Research
I aim to determine if this is something users would want or need, and if they have any suggestions for better implementing the feature.
Goal
Determine if users want to share real time reactions with their friends.
Determine if users are content with just sending their friends emojis or message reactions.
Understand what users want as a new feature.
Identify any gaps in the current market that this feature can fulfill.
Objectives
How might we explore ways for viewers to watch videos with their friends in real time while feeling safe and having fun?
Competitive Analysis
I started this project by conducting a competitive analysis. I thought this would be a good place to start since I wanted to see if there was something similar in the market. I tried to pick competitors that might have a similar feature already, or ones that are currently competing with TikTok.
Interview
The interview portion of this project was where I faced the most difficulty. My original plan was to add a feature that allowed users to record their reactions to videos and send them to their friends. Most of the questions asked were based on that idea. I interviewed 6 people and 5/6 of them used TikTok. All of the users claimed to regularly send videos to their friends.
The roadblock occurred when I asked the interviewees if they would be interested in my feature. 60% of them said they would not be interested, and that this feature seemed to be too invasive or they just didn't care for it at all. After this feedback, I was unsure of if I should keep going with this idea or pivot and try a new idea.
I ended up revising my idea to try and be less invasive, but still have some of the original essence of what I wanted. This is when I came up with the watch party feature idea.
Key Findings
Users want more transparency and communication when it concerns their privacy, and they would like to opt-out of anything they deem invasive.
Users are open to new features that pertain to their interests and not something that gets randomly added.
Design & Iterate
For the users
Who are they?
I wanted the persona to reflect someone who wants to spend more time with their friends. Since many users from the interviews were concerned about the invasive nature of the feature, I also voiced that as one of the concerns Zoe has.
Meet Zoe, the casual watcher.
How would they get there?
I initially had two different user flows in mind. They were very similar for the most part, but I couldn't figure out how I wanted the user to use this feature. I created both flows and had a few people pick which one made more sense to them. The one with more votes is the one displayed below.
Discovery
Wireframes
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Since there is already an existing app, creating the low-fidelity wireframe didn't take much time. I just used a pre-existing UI kit and filled in where everything usually goes. I created a new custom icon just for watch parties, but I based it on icons that already exist in the TikTok app.
Since the main objective of this project is to add a feature, these key screens were used to show how a user would navigate and use the new feature.
Wireframes
High Fidelity Wireframes
I moved on to create a high-fidelity wireframe and asked for feedback. I had a few changes to make before sending this off for usability testing.
Iterate
Usability
Five participants were asked to complete the user flow of joining a watch party. I did an unmoderated usability test using Maze. After the testing was completed, there were some issues that were discovered.
Issue 01
Many of the participants were able to successfully complete the flow, but they were confused about what was happening.
People were unsure of which buttons to click and how inviting others worked. They also didn't understand if they were already in the watch party or not.
Solution 01
Adding more pop-ups that inform the user about what is occurring.
I wanted to add more information and direction to help lessen any confusion users had.
Before
Users couldn’t tell if they were already in the watch party or not.
After
I added a pop-up that explained to users that they just joined the watch party to lessen confusion.
I also added a pop-up that asked users if they wanted to start a watch party instead of sending the invite automatically after they clicked the invite button.
Final Prototype
Iterated Wireframe
After considering all the feedback, I revised the high-fidelity wireframe. This is the final iterated prototype.
This is the working prototype of the final iterated version. If it’s hard to use, you can click the button below to go to the Figma file.
Reflection
What I learned
I learned that just because a feature may seem good in theory, it may not be well received by the general audience. I also learned to not get discouraged due to lack of interest, and that there is room to adapt to new situations.
If I had more time…
If I had more time, I would have liked to conduct another round of interviews at the beginning stages. This is so I could gauge if users are receptive to the new feature idea.
With more time, I would've enjoyed doing another round of usability testing. This would help discern if the solutions put in place actually lessened participant confusion or not.
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