Bridging the Age Gap Between Streaming Platforms Improving User Experience for In-between Users Victor Winnhed Spring of 2016 Master's Thesis in Interaction Technology and Design, 30 credits Supervisor at UmU: Karin Fahlqvist Supervisor at SVT: Annika Bidner Examiner: Thomas Mejtoft Ume˚a University Department of Applied Physics and Electronics SE-901 87 UMEA˚ SWEDEN Abstract The media consumption on the Internet is increasing rapidly and people at all ages are getting used to live in an on demand world. Due to this, streaming platforms have to appeal to a broad audience containing children, teenagers and adults. One approach to appeal a broad target audience is to divide the streaming platform into two separate platforms, where one is aiming for children and the other one, for the rest of the users. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the user experience can be improved, to help users of ages 10-13 years old to find their way from one streaming plat- form, to another as they are growing up. The thesis investigate how existing streaming platforms appeal to a broad audience and determines reasons of why a gap can be created between streaming platforms. Based on interviews, work- shops, user tests as well as literature, a final prototype and a set of concluding suggestions have been produced as a result of this study. Contents 1 Introduction 4 1.1 Problem Statement . .5 1.2 Aim and Objective . .5 1.3 Restrictions . .6 1.4 Thesis Outline . .6 2 Background 7 2.1 About SVT . .7 2.2 SVT Play and Barnplay . .8 2.3 Consumption of Media on the Internet . .8 2.4 Barnplays Attempt to Retain Users . .8 2.5 The New Agreement . .9 3 Popular Streaming Platforms 10 3.1 Netflix . 10 3.2 YouTube . 11 3.3 Viaplay . 12 4 Designing for Different Ages 13 4.1 User Experience Design for Children and Teenagers . 13 4.2 Mobile first . 14 4.3 Binge Watching . 14 4.4 Personalization . 16 4.5 Sharing . 16 4.6 Searching . 17 4.7 Cool Among Friends . 17 5 The User Interfaces of SVT Play & Barnplay 18 5.1 Current Interface of SVT Play . 18 5.1.1 The Start View . 18 5.1.2 The Program View . 19 5.1.3 The Channels View . 21 5.2 Current Interface of Barnplay . 22 1 CONTENTS 2 6 Method 25 6.1 The Design Process . 25 6.2 Planning . 26 6.3 Research . 26 6.3.1 Literature Study . 27 6.3.2 Interviews . 27 6.3.3 Presentations & Meetings . 29 6.4 Ideate . 29 6.4.1 Workshop . 29 6.4.2 Workshop with Children . 30 6.5 Prototyping . 31 6.6 Selection . 31 6.6.1 User Tests . 31 6.7 Implementation . 33 6.8 Learning . 33 7 Results 34 7.1 Results From Interviews . 34 7.1.1 YouTube . 34 7.1.2 Barnplay . 35 7.1.3 SVT Play . 35 7.1.4 Social Media . 35 7.1.5 Devices . 36 7.2 Results From the Workshop . 36 7.2.1 Genre . 36 7.2.2 Playlists . 36 7.2.3 A New Platform . 37 7.3 Results From the Workshop With Children . 37 7.4 Prototypes . 39 7.4.1 Low-fidelity Prototypes . 39 7.4.2 Mid-fidelity Prototypes . 40 7.5 Results From the User Tests . 43 7.5.1 Genre Prototype Results . 44 7.5.2 Playlists Prototype Results . 44 7.5.3 A New Platform Prototype Results . 44 7.6 Final Prototype . 45 8 Discussion 48 8.1 Prototypes . 49 8.1.1 Genre . 49 8.1.2 Playlists . 50 8.1.3 A new platform . 50 8.2 Final Prototype . 50 8.3 Concluding Suggestions . 51 8.4 Limitations & Drawbacks . 53 8.4.1 Working with Children . 53 CONTENTS 3 8.5 Future Work . 54 9 Acknowledgments 55 A Research Interview Schedule 60 B Workshop With Children 61 Chapter 1 Introduction The Internet is an important part of many people's lives, 93% of Sweden's population have access to Internet and as of 2014, 80% use the Internet on a daily basis [1]. When browsing the Internet, people have different needs, reasons and objectives, and this is one reason why it is difficult to develop websites suitable for everyone [2]. Designing interfaces and user experiences for an age group that both includes children, teenagers and adults requires designs that are tested and well thought through; this is because people of different ages behave, think and act in different ways, which a designer has to keep in mind when designing for a broad audience [3, 2]. One way of addressing this is to develop multiple platforms or themes depending on the age of the target group [4]. A common approach is to divide the users into multiple designated groups and create one platform and user experience for each. These multiple target groups are usually divided by age, for example children and adults. Many websites are specifically made for children with educational or entertaining content, and some popular websites have a special section for children [4]. Companies providing Video On Demand (VOD) services are good examples of this, and have started developing special sections for children. For instance, YouTube released an application in 2014 called YouTube Kids1. This application is specifically designed for children in the ages below 5 years old. Netflix is also a good example due to the fact that they have a section that is made for children to use2. Teenagers are neither children nor adults and are therefore occasionally forgot- ten and left in between platforms [5]. This means that teenagers have to choose whether they are children or adults. According to the Swedish Media Coun- cil [6], 86% of teenagers in Sweden in the ages 13-16 years old owns either a computer or a tablet, and 95% owns a smartphone. With this in mind, teenagers 1https://kids.youtube.com 2https://www.netflix.com/Kids 4 1.1. Problem Statement 5 are a big group of potential users for mobile applications and web services and should be thought of as a separate target audience. This thesis has been conducted at Swedish Television (SVT) in the SVT Play team at SVT's Interactive department3. SVT's Interactive department, develop all web services at SVT. SVT's web services consists of SVT Play, svt.se, Open Archive (Oppet¨ arkiv), Bolibompa, Barnplay, News and Sports. Read more about SVT in the next chapter. 1.1 Problem Statement Having streaming platforms with different target groups based on age can gen- erate a gap consisting of users stuck in between platforms. SVT has this prob- lem with their streaming platforms SVT Play and Barnplay, where Barnplay (\Barn" translates to children) is for children in the ages of 0-11 years old, and SVT Play has content for users of all ages. Read more about SVT Play and Barnplay in the following chapter. At about 11 years of age children stop us- ing Barnplay. Furthermore, some of these children think that SVT Play feels too mature and boring, which leaves them stuck in between the platforms [7]. SVT's ambition is to offer something relevant for everyone and SVT Play offers content that is suited for all ages. However, younger users do not seem to find the content suited for them. SVT Play clearly has problems presenting a user experience that appeal to this target group and the main problem is transferring users from Barnplay to SVT Play. As of 2016, SVT has a vision to be more attractive for children and teenagers between 0-18 years old. This generation consume media with new technologies to a much greater extent than adults and is therefore an attractive target audience. However, this group of users is far from homogeneous and has to be divided into smaller groups to be managed more easily. The most difficult ones to reach out to are children and teenagers between 12-18 years old, many of them watches neither Barnplay nor SVT Play [8]. 1.2 Aim and Objective The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the user experience can be improved, to help users of ages 10-13 years old to find their way from one streaming platform to another as they are growing up. The objective of this study is defined by four sub goals: • Investigate how existing streaming platforms appeal to a broad audience. 3Read more about SVT's interactive department at: http://svti.svt.se 1.3. Restrictions 6 • Determine reasons of why an age gap can be created between streaming platforms. • Identify how the user experience in SVT Play can be improved to appeal to a younger audience. • Create and test a prototype with an improved user experience for a target group of users between 10-13 years old. 1.3 Restrictions There are differences between a 10-year-old and an 18-year-old and this age span represents a great period of change from childhood to adulthood [5]. To prevent the target audience being too large one restriction of this thesis is that the focus will be on children and teenagers between 10-13 years of age. The span 10-13 years old is of interest because of the fact that children and teenagers at these ages stop using Barnplay [9]. Children younger than 10 years old are still in Barnplays target group and will be excluded in this thesis. Another restriction to this thesis is that it will mainly focus on streaming plat- forms, other web services will not be taken into account.