iCurate Movies startup based in Boston, USA
The project started as a Wix design advisory and training on Wix as the Startup founder sought to polish their prototype by counting freelancers via Upwork.com. After the discovery call, my client realised our collaboration would be more fruitful if he hired me as a design advisor instead. The idea behind the app also caught my attention because it matches quite well with the brand name. And also who doesn’t like apps that make your life easier?
“Decision fatigue is “the idea that after making many decisions, your ability to make more and more decisions over a day becomes worse,” said Dr MacLean, a psychiatrist. “The more decisions you have to make, the more fatigue you develop and the more difficult it can become. “ - American Medical Association
Please note that the following mockups are a work in progress and do not represent the final design.
The images included are for illustrative purposes only and are subject to change as the project evolves.
Do you recognise this feeling, when you have when you open your streaming service provider and start scrolling (alone or with a partner) and trying to pick a good movie to watch? If you haven’t done prior research or recommendations priorly, you end up scrolling endlessly and either pick something you don’t enjoy or give up due to decision fatigue.
iCurate Movie App is to help the user (who has streaming subscriptions) with a comprehensive list of all the movies and documentaries that have been awarded or nominated for “Best Picture”, “Best Documentary”, and “Best TV Series” to choose from to stream.
The initial hypothesis was that the audience would be movie critics using the handpicked movie selection of awarded movies to choose from when deciding on what to watch next. Soon after a couple of tweaks and iterations we as a team decided to expand the audience to:
Movie enthusiasts •
Documentary enthusiast •
TV show enthusiasts •
Team of three, this is how the project started. I, as lead designer and advisor, my client as the main stakeholder and decision-maker and last but not least the Wix Velo developer who initially started the development of the prototype for iCurate movies. At one point there were negotiations with a third-party agency for the development of the app with a no-code platform like Flutterflow, but with put a pin on that and prioritised the user research. And thank God for that! 😁 My responsibility is clear - I need to help my client make comprehensive decisions determining the design and the development of the mobile app.
Please note that the following mockups are a work in progress and do not represent the final design. The images included are for illustrative purposes only and are subject to change as the project evolves.
Anticipated launch in late June 2024, fitting in a five-figure budget bracket, team meetings coordinated between timezones in the United States, Europe and India. For technical limitations and scalability, additional consultation should be arranged.
What better way to understand the founder's idea and concept than to work with him 1:1 on the design of the prototype in Wix? As I mentioned the first couple of meetings we had were focused on me helping my client to better understand and use Wix’s potential. Towards the end of December, I adjusted the responsiveness of the web prototype and tested the website’s speed and performance. After the winter holidays, we had a catchup meeting and started adding and tracking Hotjar insights for the website. Meanwhile, my client also appointed a Facebook Ads specialist to help us run a campaign to reach users, any type of user.
As you can suspect the user research wasn’t present yet at this point in the project.January was at its end and there was no sign of user feedback except for available free metrics from Hotjar as heatmaps and user session recordings. That’s when I decided to pitch the benefits of usability testing to my client and how we can learn much more from conducting quick-and-dirty usability testing rather than waiting for voluntary feedback from users landing on the website.Started small with only users and used my social media to scout them, prepared a short and comprehensive questionnaire in FigJam and included the 5-second test as well. If you are curious to learn more about the usability testing itself make sure to read the story here.
And guess what? After presenting the initial findings from the first round of usability testing, my client saw and appreciated the value of the user research method and initiated and proposed I do even more research covering different demographics. While preparing for the second round of usability testing I also created a list with questions for my client related to vision and product plans to better understand if we are on the same page about the further development of the project.After the second presentation and laying out the statistics from the usability testing, my client took a week's break to go over the notes and insights.
The biggest struggle for a start-up can be considered the proof of concept. Is the idea good enough to be turned into a product? In this case a mobile app. What is the target audience? Is the initial prototype comprehensible and desirable? Does it solve a real problem? What type of user is going to download the mobile app?
Answers to this and many other questions were anticipated at the start of this project and also after the week, my client took off. Unfortunately due to personal reasons, he had to take another 4-6 weeks off. For now, this project is on hold, but we keep getting feedback which sparks our motivation to keep going and polish it even more!
Sneak peek of the quick-and-dirty usability study I did in FigJam.
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