YouView: Continue Watching feature

As part of the post-launch of the Next Generation UI, we wanted to design a service that would automatically keep track of the shows viewers are watching to help them resume their viewing.

The aim of the service was to make it easier to resume a half-watched show and make it quicker to get to the next episode within a series.

Goals

Business goal: To increase ON Demand viewing and improve the CSAT scores. At the same time we wanted to align with market trends and provide a feature that was becoming standard in the TV industry.

Customer goal: Make it quicker for users to continue watching the content they had previously engaged with, without having to search for it again in long lists such as recordings or OD catalogues.

My role

My role was to lead the design of the feature from concept to delivery. Working closely with other cross-functional leads, such as Tech leads, Product owners, Delivery Managers and Test leads. I lead the end-to-end delivery of the feature and post-launch monitoring of the service.

The challenge

The main challenge of the feature was to identify the areas within the information architecture, that would best surface the continue watching items, to serve the customer needs without disrupting existing usage of the product.

2 prevailing options

1) As a tab in the front of Recordings within the MyTV section

Pros: That would provide a clear location for the users to access within the MyTV area.

Cons: Recordings tab would have to move to the 2nd position, which would be risky for customers who wanted quicker access to the Recordings' tab - as it would introduce an extra step to reach the Recordings' section.

2) As a shortcut to the main menu

Pros: Fewer clicks to reach the continue watching items as they would be surfaced in the main menu. Also the Recordings' tab within MyTV wouldn’t be affected.

Cons: This carousel would also surface other shows (such as recently recorded, or about-to-expire episodes) so the continue watching items would be mixed with other content. That would potentially make it more difficult for users to identify this as their destination to continue watching their shows.

User research

During the exploration, I organised user research to validate the solutions and tested live prototypes with BT's and TT's customers.

As part of this process I:

1. outlined the objectives

2. identified the best user research technique to test our solutions

3. created the interview script

4. facilitated the interviews and

5. gathered and analysed the findings making recommendations to the business

Final outcome

After completing the user research, my findings suggested that we proceed with the second option, which is what we launched with after deploying it in our trials base for further monitoring and evaluation.

After launching this solution, we found that the viewing completion rates within a series were increased significantly.

This also also had a positive impact on the C-Sat scores for the MyTV section. Post-launch monitoring

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