Filmrise

Increasing the user retention of the world's largest independent free streaming service

Filmrise is a streaming service currently available on Roku, Fire TV, and mobile app. It provides free content, specializing in vintage films and shows, to 35 million users internationally.

During the summer of 2019, I had the opportunity to contribute to a product redesign initiative spearheaded by TrialX, aimed at enhancing the user experience of their ad-based streaming platform, Filmrise. Following the redesign, Filmrise was successfully relaunched worldwide in 2020.

Client

Duration

Tools

Role

TrialX

6 weeks

Product Designer

Figma

Scope

UX/UI Design

Product strategy

Mobile

Android

Problem

Filmrise's user retention rates sharply declined during the initial week of download.

Objective

Redesign the user experience for Filmrise to encourage user retention.

Role

I led a mobile redesign initiative, collaborating closely with TrialX's Chief Design Officer and CEO.

Problem

Filmrise lost a staggering 80% of its users within the first week of download.

Scoping

Improving user retention became the topmost priority

Our initial focus was on identifying the primary pain points that Filmrise was encountering. Through the use of Google Analytics, we analyzed the product's performance across various metrics such as conversion rates, rage clicks, and user retention. Among these metrics, user retention stood out as a significant issue, as indicated by the sharp decline in retention rates during the first week of download (Figure 1). Moreover, retention rates continued to decrease steadily through week five.

Figure 1: User retention graph of Filmrise

OBJECTIVE

How might we design a user experience for Filmrise that encourages user retention?

key performance indicators

I identified a set of key performance indicators that served as the basis for the redesign. The primary KPI that we focused on was user retention, specifically, the capacity of Filmrise to keep its users engaged on the platform for a period of five weeks.

Figure 2: Filmrise KPIs

research

Since Filmrise had been in the market for over a year, I used existing user feedback to my advantage.

Design audit

To begin, I conducted a design audit of the current UI, identifying critical areas that required enhancement. The audit revealed several key issues such as problems with navigation, legibility, and overflow.

Figure 3: Design audit on existing Filmrise mobile design

User demographics

Users were primarily between ages 35-65.

Considering Filmrise has a user base of mostly older adults, I knew accessibility and familiarity would be essential themes to address. Especially when designing for older adults, it's crucial to prioritize accessibility, making sure that the UI is easy to use and navigate, as well as taking into account any physical limitations they may have. Additionally, since older adults may be less comfortable with technology and may not have as much experience using digital products, familiarity with the UI is important.

Figure 4: Filmrise user demographic age bar graph

NETOGRAPHY

Leveraging the comments section, I identified pain points that required immediate attention.

I organized and analyzed hundreds of comments sourced from the iOS and Google Play stores, using an affinity mapping process to expose key trends and pain points in the current UI. Apart from negative and positive trends I also discovered some issues that were deemed beyond the scope of the current redesign effort, such as buffering and ad handling. I relayed these findings to the development team for consideration on future updates.

Negative trends

Filmrise was preventing users from uncovering content.

Filmrise's absence of key features, such as movie descriptions and the ability to save content, made it challenging for users to discover content to watch, resulting in a suboptimal user experience.

Figure 5: Negative comments on Filmrise in mobile app stores

Positive trends

The absence of registration and the provision of free, high-quality content, especially vintage mysteries, set Filmrise apart from other streaming platforms. Therefore, it was imperative that the redesign catered to Filmrise's existing market advantage.

Figure 6: Positive comments on Filmrise in mobile app stores

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Conducting a competitor analysis proved instrumental in identifying the missing features and product strengths of Filmrise. I decided to focus on Tubi, Netflix, Youtube, and Vudu, which are key players in the market.

Figure 7: Competitor analysis of Filmrise

Unlike its competitors Netflix and Vudu, Filmrise offered free streaming without registration.

Despite Filmrise's market advantage in providing free streaming without registration, the platform lacked more advanced features, such as content recommendations, sharing options, a 'continue watching' feature, and advanced search, which were commonly found on competing platforms.

Conceptualize

User retention likely plummeted due to frustrations in the search process.

SEGMENTING the user experience

I categorized the user experience of Filmrise into three stages: 1. Search – finding content to watch; 2. Watch – viewing the content; 3. Return – returning to the app to continue watching.

Any user frustration falling under the "Watch" stage was deemed out of scope, as these pain points mainly related to developer concerns such as buffering and poor ad handling.

Figure 8: Stages of the Filmrise user experience

ASSUMPTIONS

If users cannot discover content to their liking, they may not be inclined to revisit Filmrise.

I plotted all three phases of the customer experience onto the user retention graph. If you'll recall, Filmrise experienced an 80% user loss within the first week of download. I inferred that this decline in user retention was likely caused by customer frustrations in the initial "Search" phase. When users encounter issues such as difficulty searching for content, hidden descriptions, or poor app navigation, they are more likely to abandon the platform.

Therefore, by creating a user-friendly experience that facilitates content discovery, we can increase the likelihood of users returning to the platform.

Figure 9: Stages of the user experience mapped onto user retention graph of Filmrise

TARGET USER

For the redesign, I defined the target user as an older adult located in the United States. (While Filmrise was a global product, its main target country was the United States.) This information helped ensure that my redesign effort was catering to the goals, motives, and frustrations of this particular user group.

Figure 10: Target user of Filmrise

approach

My design approach centered around three themes: familiarity, a content-first approach, and accessibility.

DESIGN THEMES

To tackle the issue of users leaving due to difficulty finding content, I prioritized showcasing Filmrise's niche content in efforts to quickly convert users from searching to watching. Considering the target audience of older adults, I focused on accessibility and familiarity by utilizing UI patterns commonly found on other products such as Tubi and Netflix.

Figure 11: Design themes used to design Fimrise

user testing

Due to the limited budget and time constraints of the project, external user testing was not feasible. Instead, I conducted user testing with the developers at TrialX who were working on other projects.

Home page iterations

Mid- fidelity design iteration

Low-fidelity design iteration

Final design

Figure 12: Home page iterations from low to high-fidelity

Home page changes from low to high-fidelity:

Increased size of content tiles and font
During testing, I received feedback that the home page displayed an overwhelming amount of information, contributing to cognitive overload in the search process. To address this, I increased the size of the content tiles and font to improve accessibility for the older adult demographic of the product.
Added "I can't decide" button
From studying the user retention graph, I knew that the search process was one of the biggest areas of opportunity. Our hypothesis was if we helped users find enjoyable content sooner, they would be less likely to drop off. The "I can't decide" feature was designed with the intention to help users reach the watch phase of the experience sooner and with less friction.
Removed rating metric
In testing, users voiced that while it was nice to see the ratings of each film, they would rather have a way to rank the films based on these ratings. Therefore, in the final design I included a sorting feature within each genre. I also removed the rating metric from the home page and moved this to the internal content page to reduce information overload on the home page.
Four-item bottom navigation
The original Filmrise design had a text based top navigation; one of the first design decisions I made was to change this to a bottom icon + text based navigation. This approach is more accessible for mobile users as it requires less strain to reach. Through testing I learned that users wanted to see TV and moves separately. Users entered the app already knowing whether they wanted to watch a movie or a TV show; therefore I decided to split up movies and TV into separate tabs in the final design.
Removed titles on content tiles
Through studying the content's poster designs that would be displayed on the home page, I realized most poster designs contained the movie/TV show title in bold, visible lettering. In order to remove duplicate information and decrease overload I made the decision to remove the content tile titles from the home page.

content information iterations

Mid- fidelity design iteration

Low-fidelity design iteration

Final design

Figure 13: Content information iterations from low to high-fidelity

Content information changes from low to high-fidelity:

Full screen bottom sheet modal in place of pop up modal approach
During user testing I noticed that users were trying to zoom or click into the modal to see more information. Therefore, through the redesign process I changed the pop up to a full screen bottom sheet to enlarge the size of content (text, poster art) and provide space for additional content (cast and director information, added text in the description).
Added cast and director information
Users were asking questions during testing such as "This was the one directed by X, right?" In the final designs I added cast and director information to the information pages. Additionally, I added an option in the search feature that allowed user to search by cast members or directors.
Adjusted the information hierarchy
‍In testing users were struggling to find the play button. To increase clarity in the final design I increased the size and padding around the play button. The secondary buttons (cast, share, save) were moved to the top of the page. The hierarchy was further emphasized by color and shape choices (only the play button was the primary color and fully filled in the oval shape).

design system

The design system focused on familiar and inclusive components.

The main user demographic for Filmrise was older adults (ages 35-65) located in the United States. Here are some examples of how I designed with this demographic in mind.

Accessible touch targets with ample margin and padding
Horizontal and vertical grid system to help mental grouping of elements
Text and icon based navigation to increase read time and provide inclusivity for global audiences

Note: At the time of this redesign, Filmrise had been in the market for around a year; therefore, there were some existing brand restrictions (i.e. color and type styles) that influenced my work.

Figure 14: Design assets and grid system for Filmrise

final design

Simple Onboarding

Unlike other competitors like Netflix and Tubi, Filmrise is a free streaming service that does not require any log in.

"I can't decide"

After 5 minutes of browsing, Filmrise will generate a list of top 3 pics based on search patterns.

Comprehensive filters

Users are able to sort and filter content by various metrics such as user ratings and release date.

Saving content

Users can easily save TV or movie content that they come across in the search process. This saved content will appear in its own navigation item.

Advanced search

Search by movie or TV title, cast names, director names, or genre.

Design handoff

Before leaving the team I handed off my completed designs to the development team. I included assets such as padding, text / color styles, grid systems, and icongraphy.

Results

Since the 2019 redesign was implemented, Filmrise ratings have substantially increased.

Figure 15: Improvements made to ratings & reviews in the iOS app store for Filmrise (2019 to 2022)

Figure 16: Cord Cutters article snapshot on Filmrise

In the iOS app store, Filmrise has increased in user ratings from a 3.7 to a 4.6, nearly a one point increase. Also, Filmrise had a large uptick in their user base, reporting 31.5 million users in 2020. Unfortunately, as this was a short term design project, I was not able to see this app into development and testing. Therefore, I was unable to obtain the new user retention statistics for Filmrise.

Of course, the success that this product saw cannot be solely attributed to the redesign of 2019. Filmrise was re-launched in 2020. Along with the UI/UX redesign came developer updates that also worked to improve the user experience of the product. Pain points in the viewing experience such as ad handling and buffering, for example, were fixed in the relaunch. Additionally, with the COVID-19 pandemic people to spent more time indoors and on their screen. Therefore, streaming platforms saw a boost in users across the board, with Filmrise as no exception.