This research was conducted in partnership with 2 other classmates for our Usability Studies class at UW as part of the Human Centered Design and Engineering MS program. My role during this project was to recruit and schedule our participants, conduct usability test sessions, note take during sessions and lead the analysis procedures.
Our team was interested in identifying tedious user flows, navigation issues, and hard to find features to better understand the significance of these problems and how they might be improved.
TL;DR:
Participants were excited by the content MAX has, but because of how the website is organized, people don’t want to spend time on MAX unless they already know what they’re going to watch.
HBO Max in it's current state
Research Questions
What tedious user flows do participants experience when using MAX?
What features do participants have difficulty finding or are unable to find at all?
What navigation issues do participants face when using MAX?
Participants
Participants for the usability test were exclusively recruited from the University of Washington’s HCDE Department’s Slack #study-recruitment channel. In addition to time availability, users were screened based on: being within the 18-65 age rang, have used a streaming service before, and were available for in-person testing.
*No participant used MAX on a regular basis. Among the participants who had used MAX in the past, use was significantly less than competitors.*
Method and Data Collection
For this study, we conducted 6 in-person sessions of a moderated usability test. Participants performed tasks on a computer and Max account provided by the team.
- Think Aloud Protocol: observe participant’s perceptions during tasks
- Post-task Survey: record participant’s overall impressions
- Levels of Success: document complete success, partial success, and failure
Overarching Themes
1. People are interested in the content that MAX offers compared to other streaming services
"They have a lot of titles...for these streaming services it’s about the content. And here's (HBO) a lot better content than on Netflix" - P2
“They have a good variety of content” - P3
2. Participants were overwhelmed by the layout of MAX, and continually referenced their preference for Netflix.
Homepage of HBO MAX
Homepage of Netflix
3. Participants were frustrated by the amount of page loads needed to complete tasks.
Steps to info page on MAX vs Netflix
Highlight of Findings
