Amazon Prime Concept: Revisit Your Favorite Scenes
Note: I’m not affiliated with Amazon Prime Video in any way, neither do I do promotions here. This is purely based on my idea of how the app would look with an additional feature
Most people in the whole wide world watch a lot of movies and TV series, so do I. I use streaming services like Amazon Prime to keep myself entertained. At times when I have watched a cool movie or episode, I like to share my experiences with my friends and family or revisit my favorite parts. It’s quite difficult to do that because
1. I have no clue where exactly my favorite parts are
2. My friends struggle to remember the scene which I mention or they haven’t watched it yet
Since a plethora of contents evolving on Amazon prime, it’s so difficult for me to look back on what I have watched lately
The Amazon Prime watch process
I wanted to understand the process whereby the watchers formed these emotions, thus I focused my user research on the Amazon prime watching parameters: the surfing period, the watch period and the activities taken after watching
User research
I interviewed three users varying from regular user, occasional user and outlier one- who used Amazon prime to follow his favorite movie/show. From the user interview insights gained are below:
1. Users most probably tend to watch a show/movie at the suggestion of friends, family and online reviews. It’s ostensible that user’s choice largely depends on social factors (friends, family, companions and so forth)
2. Users like to rewatch specific scenes and talk about the scenes with others
Market Research
How do other entertainment services address this issue from the social context of watching?
The current solutions provide ways to refer back to favorite clips or particular scenes determined by the creator. No solutions provide a way for the watchers to refer back to specific scenes. I explored that there are options of adding extensions on Google Chrome to bookmark videos while watching on browser
YouTube lets users to discuss and link timestamps of scenes through comments, but Amazon prime doesn’t have the comments section
Brainstorming
From user research, I understood that individuals needed to connect with others over memorable scenes of a film or TV show, uncovering a social side to watching
Users would like to share their watching experiences and express their emotions with others
I wanted to find an efficient method to facilitate this social connection
At the end of the brainstorming session, three solution spaces were found
- Friends’ recommendations: sending/receiving, or seeing what a friend is currently watching or what shows they have liked
- Revisiting the scenes: Make it convenient for users to revisit scenes from a movie or TV show
- Social discussions: Create a platform to encourage users to connect with each other through movies and shows
Amazon Prime requires some connectivity
After contemplating over two solutions below
- Sending/receiving others’ recommendations
- Bookmarking video clips (timestamps) to revisit later
I decided to go with the latter solution, because the former one required to add a friends feature to Amazon prime which would again become like a social media app like Facebook or Instagram. It had a high impact but difficult feasibility. A bookmark solution would pave the way for users to return back to favorite scenes to share their experiences and connect with friends. Watchers could save bookmarked scenes as a collection
Feature implementation
Initial approach
I wanted to test the feasibility of the “bookmakers” feature, thus I created an information hierarchy. Amazon prime has different page layouts for movies and TV shows. For both, users would need to :
- Bookmark while watching
- Access a bookmark
- Navigate to a scene by clicking on a bookmark
- Delete a bookmark
For bookmarks, I wanted to keep up the functions of Amazon prime. I also wanted to maintain the Amazon prime brand to a possible extent
Placement of Bookmarks
Since Amazon prime did not have hamburger menu option separately. I picked the spot to place Bookmarks near the kids tab above the hero banner as an entry point. In the Bookmarks tab all bookmarked scenes will be saved as a collection, so that it would be convenient to access later
On the TV show information page, I explored three entry points. Users might think placing the bookmarks icons next to an episode or next share icon meant they were bookmarking the whole episode or a full TV show. With several explorations I went ahead with the first option
I explored for the Movie information page too. Placing bookmark icon near the share icon would create an impression of bookmarking the whole movie. So I chose to go with the second option
Bookmarking the scenes
Similar to accessing Bookmarks, bookmarking scenes should be easy and straightforward, much like bookmarking a page in a book. I decided to add bookmark notes later
In the first place I thought is it necessary to add bookmark notes? Allowing users to add personal notes to Bookmarks would help capture a user’s experience. It could also help them remember the scene when rewatching the movie or show. However, It was difficult to incorporate notes into the watching process because of the limited entry points on the watch screen
Timestamp Markers
Markers would let users to view all their bookmarked scenes from a movie or episode screen. Once users finish watching, In the bookmarks section all notes could be edited later if they want to. Users would not have to go back and forth continually to main Bookmarks page to view or edit the notes
Similar to YouTube yellow indicators. Here I have used blue indicators where it shows a pop-up comments when users drag the slider to the markers
Why blue color? Since blue is the brand shade for Amazon prime I chose it for marking color
Final interaction
The final flow gives a simple access to Bookmarks for any movie or TV show/series. while watching, users can see their past bookmarks yet additionally bookmark new scenes, with the option of adding a note. Users can view their old bookmarks and notes while watching by sliding through the watch bar
Final Thoughts
Individuals want to share their experiences and sentiments after watching a movie or series. Be that as it may, Video content products like YouTube, Netflix or Amazon prime don’t give an approach to users to refer back to their favorite scenes. A bookmarks feature/highlight in Amazon prime would give the facility to capture their experiences for easy access in the future. To expand the social connectivity of this feature, I would continue to explore ways to share bookmarked scenes with friends, further facilitating social connection after watching
I hope you enjoyed reading it. Be sure to clap👏 and leave your thoughts below. I would love to hear more from you :)
