Role: Head of Design, hands-on.
Viki, a play on the words video and wiki, is the global TV site where millions of people discover, watch and subtitle global primetime shows and movies in more than 200 languages. Together with its fans, Viki removes the language and cultural barriers that stand between great entertainment and fans everywhere.
Achievements
200% increase for news reading, 300% for timed-comments, and 100% for comments.
Nomimee Google Play Award
One of the Best iOS Apps at Apple’s WWDC
Key Challenges
People only open the app when there’s a new episode of the show they’re following, and usually it’s once or twice a week, whereas in fact, for Korean Drama for example, there are a huge fans base that talk about anything related to the show: from news, reviews, specific scene, or even the clothes the casts wear. The challenge was about increasing the engagement of people in the community who share the same interests.
The New Design
This was a redesign project of Rakuten Viki iOS App's TV Show experience, with the goal to increase engagement for different type of content within a TV Show, e.g timed-comment, reviews, news, and comments.
The new design on the tablet.
Early prototype to explore the overall interaction design concept for the new app.
The draft for the new visual direction.
The Collaboration
As the Head of UX & Design, I led the design process. We used Google-style Design Sprint to come up with the new design. The collaborative nature of design sprint was a perfect match to our team. People from various team were involved in the sprint.
Variants that we explored
The Prototype and Validation
We built several prototypes using Keynote (yes, that's right, the presentation app on the Mac) in less than 4 hours. Below was one of the three prototypes we had which was built in 44 minutes.
Below were some user research we’ve done to validate the concept.
Metrics to measure the success
Good design is not only about visual design. It needs to drive good business results and user engagement. The new app (version 4.9.0) was released on 27 July 2016. There's a 200% increase for news reading, 300% for timed-comments, and 100% for comments.
Not only about business metrics, but what users say and how they feel, do matter.
Innovation is…
Innovation is about finding the sweet spot between user's desirability, business viability, and technology feasibility. Not only the app looks better, it also gave significant business results and user engagement.