Fulfilling the magic of Disney with song.
Case Study
Role: UX/UI Design
Team: Solo Project
Task: Add a feature
Time: 4 weeks (80 hrs)
Tools: Figma, Maze, Miro, Asana
Disney+ is a subscription video on-demand streaming service owned and operated by the Media and Entertainment Distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. Viewers can dive into a vast library of Disney content, plus a growing collection of movies and shows from 21st Century Fox, Pixar, and Marvel. Ten million users had subscribed to Disney+ by the end of its first day of operation. The service had 103 million global subscribers as of April 2021.
It was Walt Disney who once said that “when you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.”
My background as a film producer taught me to design a complete experience for your audience and focus on the senses. Keeping true to the Disney’s interaction brand strategy, my goal for this project is to enhance the experience of Disney+ with the inclusion of music. Combining the magic of music to the magic of Disney only seemed to amplify that ability to move people.
The information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Disney.
The Challenge.
Disney+ has a limited library and offers less variety than its competitors. To become a top contender in the online streaming game, Disney will need to offer other forms of value to their subscribers to increase subscriptions, viewership, and continued experience for their fans.
The Solution.
For Disney, storytelling is key. Disney songs and music has always been an important part of that Disney storytelling experience. Incorporating a music feature on Disney+ will fulfill the emotional story of the films, empower the user, and strengthen the Disney brand.
“The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.”
— George Lucas
THE APPROACH
Merging music and video
I began my research by completing a thorough market research on the video streaming and audio streaming companies. My competitive analysis revealed the strengths of top video streaming platforms as 1) variety of content 2) great recommendation algorithms 3) accessible on all major aggregators. The top audio streaming platforms allows personalization and on demand access.
I continued my research on the usage of Disney music on other audio streaming platforms.
Disney x Spotify - Disney Hits: The top songs from the biggest Disney and Pixar Films. 3.7M likes
Disney x YouTube - DisneyMusicVEVO: Into the Unknown (Frozen 2). 344M views
Disney x YouTube - DisneyUK: Let it Go (Frozen). 2.5B views
There are 5.3M subscribers on the Disney Youtube channel. Disney songs are popular on Spotify, with users having streamed more than 2 billion minutes of Disney music this year so far. Market research showed how large the user base is for music in video format. The assumption was simple, millions of people search for Disney songs on other platforms daily. Convert the usage on these other platforms back to Disney’s own Disney+ streaming platform.
BE OUR GUEST
Know your audience.
Provisional personas were created upon completion of the market research. To design an experience relevant to current users, I will need to identify the users and how they can be segmented.
Listen.
Disney’s brand strategy is to put the guests in control of telling Disney what was important in a Disney experience. Doing so made it possible for the company to create solutions that would enable guests to optimize their personal Disney experience across multiple points of touch.
Staying true to Disney’s core promise, I interviewed 5 participants that are currently subscribed to Disney+. Participants (3 males, 2 females) ranged from ages 30 to 48; 2 participants are married with kids, 2 participants married with baby, and 1 participant is a single bachelor that is very close to extended family; all participants also use some sort of audio streaming service. My goals were to understand 1) how users listen to Disney songs and music, 2) how users recognize a song from a movie, and 3) how a playlist can be applied to a video streaming service.
“Ready to know what the people know, ask ’em my questions and get some answers.”
What People Are Saying
“My baby loves music. We just leave Disney+ on in the background for the songs. We watch movie scenes just for the music.”
— Kim & Chris (33, Stay at home mom; 35, Client Success Manager)
“My daughter would constantly request songs by humming a tune or describing the scene of the movie.”
— Mike (43, Chiropractor with 2 children)
“Children like to watch and listen to songs on repeat, over and over again. Don’t delete it from the homepage after the movie is watched, Disney+!”
— Ruby (38, Stay at home mom with 1 toddler)
THE DISCOVERY
The connection between hearing music and watching a scene in a movie.
The complexity of sound and visual design in film more closely matches how we process multi-sensory inputs in real life. Psychologists have researched the complexities of multimodal processing: by stimulating one sense, such as hearing, could cause the brain to produce feedback that appealed to a related sense, like vision.
User research revealed the link between songs and visuals. Sight and sound are intertwined. 5/5 participants can recall a scene from a movie by listening to the corresponding song.
Other insights into my research showed that personalization and options such as repeat were significant in the user’s usage of a playlist. Users like to pick and choose songs they like, users like to listen to songs on repeat, and users have replayed a scenes in movies just to listen to the songs.
Key insights from user research led me to my user persona. Who am I designing for? Meet Dan.
DEEPER INSIGHTS
New User Journeys
Now that I have defined who will be using the new feature, I explored the different paths that users may take to use this new music feature of listening to songs on this platform and creating their own playlist.
User Flow #1: Adding a song by recognizing a specific scene in a movie.
User Flow #2: Adding a song while watching a movie.
User Flow #3: Add songs by exploring new featured songs.
Storytelling the Experience.
Knowing exactly who I was designing for allowed me to ask myself how this new feature will fit into the lives of Disney+ subscribers. I imagined ideal experiences and empathized with the user on its motivations and frustrations. I focused here on how the user think and behave rather than specifics of the design. Experience through storytelling dives deeper into understanding the user and paves the road to seeing how the final product will be utilized.
“Get the story. The story’s the most important thing. Once you’ve got the story then everything else will fall into place.”
— Walt Disney
BACK TO BUSINESS
Disney’s Core Promise.
After understanding the user and exploring how the users will use the new feature, I came back to reassess whether this new design will stay true to Disney core promise: to create happiness through magical experiences.
Implementing a music feature in Disney+ will give users a fuller Disney experience with both visuals and music. This new design will empower the user, strengthen the brand, and keep users on the same platform to experience the brand in different ways.
I confirmed the feasibility of this new design with developers and data science architects. Considering technicalities and combining user goals and business goals, I was able to set up the blueprint for the design with the site map and priority roadmap.
Keep the brand magic.
The Disney brand continues to rank amongst the best, most powerful, and most recognizable brands in the world. My goal is to keep the new feature in line with the current user interface on Disney+ so it will give the user one seamless experience.
INTRODUCING A MUSIC FEATURE
I’m all ears. Mouse ears.
Disney+, Disney’s streaming platform was born already a unicorn. With the addition of music, Disney+ subscribers will now be able to enjoy a complete experience that combines visuals and music. I first began by adding important sections to the header with the addition of “+PLAYLIST” and “SONGS”. Users will now be able to search by song, explore songs, and go directly to their playlist to listen to Disney music and songs they have added from Disney+ huge library of content.
FIND THE SONG BY MOVIE.
Users can find a specific song by looking up the soundtrack under the film’s main page. Songs are displayed with the song title and artist, along with the corresponding scene from the movie. Users are able to find a specific song by the matching scene of the movie and add it directly to their playlist or add all songs from the film to their playlist.
HEAR THE SONG.
When the user plays the song, the video of the corresponding scene from the movie will play. Users will be able to add a song to their playlist while the song is playing. Upon hover or pause, the title of the song and add button will pop up to enable the user to add to playlist.
ADD A SONG TO PLAYLIST WHILE WATCHING THE MOVIE.
The new music feature will also allow users to add a song while the watching the movie. While the movie is playing, upon hover or pause, the song title will feature as an overlay and allow users to add to playlist without even pausing the movie.
DISNEY+ PLAYLIST.
The songs are added to the users own personalized playlist. Users can play all or select a song and play on repeat. Songs are listed in the order of most recently added and categorized by movie. List icon unfolds your list of songs added or can collapse to show only the song and corresponding scene video playing full screen. Music lyric icon provides users with the lyrics of the song that is currently playing.
HOW I GOT THERE.
Everything Is By Design.
Disney is a company that continues to build off past successes with new dreams and innovations. My biggest challenge I faced with this project was designing a feature that will not take away from the Disney brand but instead preserve what makes Disney extraordinary and understand the growing desires of their audience.
The key, as Disney knows, isn’t to wait for the brand to become stale before thinking of new ideas. Keep dreaming, keep inventing, and keep pushing out new products to draw the audience to you.
ALL IN ONE
The concept of an all in one application for Disney seemed like the next step to designing a complete experience for the Disney+ audience. Although various all in one apps seem to be trending in other industries, I knew there may be reservations to this new feature since the film and music business are so vastly different. Combining various applications from audio streaming into Disney+ current video streaming platform is a new idea and users may not be accustomed to the notion of having movies and music under one interface on a single platform. I knew that usability testing will be key in learning about the users behavior and preferences, identifying problems, and uncovering opportunities to improve.
After designing my hifi wireframes, I created the prototype to test 3 main user flows. I focused on the desktop interface as it is the most similar to the tv app and was the main choice of platform for Disney+.
Prototyping was the most effective way to gain meaning feedback from Disney+ subscribers.
User Task #1: Adding a song by recognizing a specific scene in a movie.
User Task #2: Adding a song while watching a movie.
User Task #3: Go to Playlist.
USABILITY TEST
Uncover the Opportunities.
Usability testing was completed on 5 participants via Maze, a remote testing program made for user-facing experiences. All 5 participants are actively subscribed to Disney+.
All 5/5 participants completed the 3 tasks at the rate of 100%. Heat maps showed areas of most usage and average time on the page. Findings of the usability test suggest that more clarification was needed for the new “+song” icon. The majority of the participants found the location of the “+song” in the bottom right corner easy to find and not distracting to the film. The playlist is “intuitive” and “good with its current features.”
Based on the findings of the usability test, my main priority was to clarify the new “+song” icon. I redesign the interaction of the icon to provide visual feedback with a tooltip when the user hovers over the icon. This visual confirmation is important as this is a new icon for the new feature.
The successes of the usability test showed that the user interface is simple enough to provide a happy and frictionless user experience for Disney+ subscribers.
Would current Disney+ subscribers use the new features?
“Absolutely! My child is at a stage where he loves music, but does not like seeing the characters chit chat.”
— Andrea (31, Stay at home mom, married with 1 baby)
“Yes. My kids would love it.”
— Cheryl (37, PA, Married with 3 kids)
“I thought this was great. It was all very simple. My family members with kids would definitely use this, they love Disney songs.”
— Jason (48, Designer, Single)
“Oh Yeah. Most definitely, especially for the kids.”
— Michael (43, Chiropracter, Married with 2 kids)
Music on Disney+.
Play your favorite songs on Disney+.
REFLECTION
What I learned.
“Whatever we accomplish is due to the combined effort”
My goal for this project was to design a complete experience for the Disney+ subscriber, one that combined functionality from audio streaming apps with the current Disney+ platform. Discovering the most seamless design to add a feature and not take away from the core value of Disney+ was the most challenging.
During my ideation phase, I met with developers to pitch my notion of incorporating music features into a video streaming platform. I learned first hand the importance of considering all technicalities before designing. As a designer, I love to think about innovation and design systems, and developers think about modular code thats easy to maintain. Just a 15 minute chat with a developer told me what is possible and what would be too difficult to develop. I learned that getting engineers involved in the design process early on would be beneficial for the whole team and for the success of a viable product.
Working on a project for a company like Disney also taught me the significance of understanding the company’s values and promises. For Walt Disney, the world’s first UX Designer, it has always been about the experience.
And the key to this success story is to stay relevant.