LOVEFiLM Mobile App
Role: Lead Designer
Launched: August 2016
LOVEFiLM was the UK and Germany’s leading DVD and Blu-ray rental service, featuring a library of over 80,000 movies and television shows. The brief was to design and deliver a total rebuild of the iOS and Android app as a fully responsive, progressively enhanced, single codebase app.
Research & Analysis
After doing an audit of the existing app, website and reviewing all the customer feedback that came in via email or submission on the app stores, we had a good idea of what the priorities for the new app should be; allowing customers to set their preferred disc format as opposed to needing to set it every time, easier reporting of issues with their disc, managing and viewing subscriptions, signing up or upgrading subscriptions, receiving in-app alerts which alert customers when their next disc is on the way, acknowledge disc returns and notifying them that their rental list is running low.
“There is no way to choose 3D Blu-ray as your format choice. I got the app so it would be more convenient, not to then have to go to the website any way.”
“Poor Terrible UX. Everything is difficult to do / unintuitive and you can’t do important stuff like reporting something hasn’t arrived.”
“You have to manage each rental separately in about 3 steps rather than being able to batch edit your list in a quick easy fashion”
Ideation: Rental list explorations
I explored ways of staying true to the playful LOVEFiLM brand personality and thought about how we could utilize the unique selling point of the service, being that customers could watch the latest movies and TV shows, ahead of streaming services. I also looked for opportunities to join the two parts of the business together, one being the app and the other being the distribution of the DVDs.
The distinctive LOVEFiLM sleeve which customers receive and return their DVDs in I felt presented an opportunity to inject some fun, and reinforce the connection between the digital and physical parts of the product. I also explored using actors or characters from titles to communicate in app messaging, serving the dual purpose of making the app fun and advertising titles.
Validation: Prototyping and Testing
After several rounds of wireframe iterations, I built a prototype using InVision, a web based prototyping, collaboration and workflow tool.
InVision allowed me to conduct frequent in-house guerilla testing. 24 contributors from Engineering, Management, Marketing, Distribution and PM teams were able to review the app progress on a weekly basis and comment directly on the updates, and question and engage with me regarding UX decisions.
By involving everyone early on in the UX process I had great engagement from the wider team. Putting the prototype in everyone’s hands made everyone excited and got them behind the app re-launch, this gave everyone ownership - engineers also had a reference to work with when building the app.
Visual Design + Delivery
The app was built using the Cordova platform, using the Ionic framework. The Cordova platform enabled us to have a single codebase for both the iOS and Android applications, while the Ionic framework provided an AngularJS architecture. I worked with the engineering teams to devise a stylesheet for them to build the app from, being the sole UX designer working on a big app relaunch - I had to work smart to reduce margins for error. Having an InVision prototype to help communicate expectations was super handy.
I designed the Kindle Wake Screen ads for UK and Germany and oversaw and art directed the app store submissions which were outsourced to Saatchi Mobile.
“This app has been in need of an overhaul for a very long time, and now its finally the app it should always have been. So much simpler to navigate with fewer steps, plus a much more modern look. Can’t imagine why it took so long to revamp, but its been worth the wait.”
“Excellent update! This app is like a 2.0 version when compared to the old version - much quicker and smoother to work, completely restyled, and haven’t found any bugs yet.”
The new app brought LOVEFiLM a 25% increase in rental list activity, and rental list adds from the mobile app overtook adds from the website for the first time.