Challenge
Design a third-party desktop website or desktop app (not Netflix-branded) where the community can celebrate shared stories together through communal and authentic experiences.
Pain point & Opportunities
As gays, when we grew up as queer, we could only watch LGBT films secretly in bed after our parents left. We often felt isolated in society, but those movies gave us the strength to live our lives. Thus, in pride month, we decided to launch a platform where queers can connect with each other through LGBT films and potentially find their date on it. We use movies as icebreakers and let queer find their people to talk to even during the quarantine. However, global pandemic limits the interaction between people.
So we want to explore:
How might we help the community utilize video streaming platforms to share their experience with content such as series, television shows, and movies they love?
Research
For this project, we decided to focus on the LGBTQ community and think about how to bond the community through video streaming services. Since there are no data sources provided by the host, we turned to database websites to prove our strategies.
A 2017 Gallup poll concluded that 4.5% of adult Americans identified as LGBT, with 5.1% of women identifying as LGBT, compared with 3.9% of men. A different survey in 2016 from the Williams Institute estimated that 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. According to a 2019 research by Community Marketing & Insights, about 84% of LGBTQ people in the U.S. read or watch LGBTQ media content regularly.
After consumer research, we found out that this product’s target audience would be LGBTQ+ members who subscribe to streaming platforms and regularly watch LGBTQ-related media. Our target audience likes to meet people and share opinions about movies with communities. LGBTQ people often suffer from isolation and disconnection from the LGBTQ community since they don’t feel comfortable talking about it with others openly or can’t find access to it.
From my perspective, I learned about LGBTQ and discover my sexuality mostly through movies and TV when growing up; however, it’s hard to discuss it with others since no one I know was watching the same thing, leading to depression and a sense of isolation.
How can we integrate social functions into a video streaming platform to empower the community?
Result
movieQ puts our members first, so when we delivered our user flow, we decided to let the flow go to user profiles from most of the pages. When signed in, there will be profiles displayed on the front page based on the recommendations. Users can also explore other profiles from the movie details and community page. The flow is designed to let users find other people through the website with movies as icebreakers and a communal bond.
Here are the features:
