BILAL

PRODUCT DESIGNER
Apr 2021 - Present

Amazon Freevee

Building a TV experience for people who hate making decisions

0→1
living room devices
single-person ux team
experimental project
full-stack ux deliverables

Case study

~12 minutes

  • An average american consumer spends 45 hours per year deciding what to stream. How can Freevee build a drop-in experience that eases the decision-making process?

    Overview ✨

  • Customer pain-points 🤕

    Decision fatigue

    An average american takes to decide what to watch next:

    per session

    per year

    7.4 minutes

    45 Hours

    $7.46

    2.5x

    “...having to sift through twitter, youtube and tiktok to find what to watch next”


    Inspite of advancements in personalisation, people still prefer recommendations from other people regarding what they should watch next.


    Recommendation algorithms are getting smarter by the minute. But can they replace human taste? We believe we are still far from that.

    With the onslaught of streaming services, customers are having to spend a lot more to watch their favorite shows.

    Cost

    someone who's 18 will spend 116 days deciding what to watch by the time they turn 81

    Cost of each streaming service per month

    Number of streaming services per user

  • Organisational pain-points 🚨

    “..but look at Netflix!”

    A status quo bias where the current baseline is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.


    During ideation, most stakeholders were unable to think beyond the familiar UX in the streaming industry.

    With hiring good engineering talent being one of the challenges, I designed this pitch to showcase at DevCon 2021

    Re-purposing prime video’s tech

    The tech leadership was able to ship the MVP across the clients by the virtue of using a lot of prime video’s tech.


    But this led to a lot of self-induced UX constraints, making prioritization even more crucial to ensure the customer experience isn’t affected.

  • Why solve for low-intent? 🤔

  • Manager

    Ashraf Alkarmi
    Director, Amazon Freevee

    🍱
    As the sole designer for the platform, I built cross-organizational relationships with Prime Video, Alexa and Amazon shopping to drive alignment to acquire PMF.

    💎
    As of Q2 2022, we clocked a total watch time of 280 million hours per month, with over 65 million MAUs and a revenue of $43 million per month.

    ⛳️
    Took from 0→1 in less than 4 months. On Mar 2022, I helped launch the MVP across 7 living room clients, including Roku, Xbox, PlayStation, Samsung, LG, and Apple TV.

    Design Lead (L6)

    JAN 2021 - Present

    My impact

    in a nutshell

  • Approach

    a.k.a UX big bets

    1. Drop-in

    2. Social

    3. Cost

    • Allow the users to engage with the content right off the bat, with a curated playlist of our big-bet.


      Whether it is a film-critic’s curated pick or a TV show that your friend strongly recommends, Freevee provides the context for each of the recommendations.

    • Some examples of the nudges that will help provide enough context to the viewers to feel comfortable jumping in with the ongoing content.

      awards &
      accolades

    • reviews

      Some examples of the nudges that will help provide enough context to the viewers to feel comfortable jumping in with the ongoing content.

    • nudges

      library

    Drop-in

    01 —

    • A television-centric take on social viewing. Leveraging our smartphones to complement the living room entertainment.


      11 of 12 user-interview participants mentioned that they use their smartphones when they are watching something casually.

    • A television-centric take on social viewing. Leveraging our smartphones to complement the living room entertainment.


      11 of 12 user-interview participants mentioned that they use their smartphones when they are watching something casually.

    • A television-centric take on social viewing. Leveraging our smartphones to complement the living room entertainment.


      11 of 12 user-interview participants mentioned that they use their smartphones when they are watching something casually.

    • A television-centric take on social viewing. Leveraging our smartphones to complement the living room entertainment.


      11 of 12 user-interview participants mentioned that they use their smartphones when they are watching something casually.

    Social

    02 —

    • An emphasis on creative direction and clear guardrails for the advertising assets.


      Alexa-enabled interactive ads such as buying your amazon repeat-purchases, adding a soundtrack from the current program to your spotify playlist etc.


      An ad experience that thoroughly baked into the app — not an afterthought.

    • An emphasis on creative direction and clear guardrails for the advertising assets.


      Alexa-enabled interactive ads such as buying your amazon repeat-purchases, adding a soundtrack from the current program to your spotify playlist etc.


      An ad experience that thoroughly baked into the app — not an afterthought.

    • An emphasis on creative direction and clear guardrails for the advertising assets.


      Alexa-enabled interactive ads such as buying your amazon repeat-purchases, adding a soundtrack from the current program to your spotify playlist etc.


      An ad experience that thoroughly baked into the app — not an afterthought.

    Free

    03 —

  • Metrics 🧪

    Primary

    • Time to first (meaningful) stream

    • Hours per customer

    Secondary

    • Watch Hours

    • Abandonments

    • Titles per session

    Measuring success

    • Little Big

      Details

    • 1.

      Before

      After

    • 2.

      Before

      After

    • 3.

      Before

      After

    • Collaboration

      Stories

    • "…show more of our selection"

      Yes, we need to help them find a title to watch ASAP

      But, we needn't show titles in excess.

      6 weeks roll out
      HPC: 27.4 to 30.9 (12.7%)

      01 —

    • "…every streaming app has a detail-page"

      Yes, we need to aid informed decisions for our users

      But, we needn't be confined to a page-based solution

      TFS: 3:57 to 3:24
      * Time to first (meaningful) stream

      02 —

    • "…have the best recommendations for NextUp"

      Yes, we may allow users to binge

      But, we needn't overwhelm them with options

      Decoy Effect: show an option that’s easier to discard

      03 —

  • Execution

    Success

    Market

    Influence

    Team-facing

    Customer-facing

    Functional

    Success

    Eco-system

    Impact

    From zero to one, launched the app on 7 major platforms, all within 4 months.


    Collaborated across orgs like Prime Video Alexa, Retail & Ads.

    As of Q2 2022, 65MM MAUs


    Hours-per-customer: 36min/day

    Time-to-first-stream: 03:24

    More players in the landscape adopted AVOD post-Freevee launch, including Prime Video's integration.


    Saw more success with FireTV, Roku as opposed to higher-end devices like Apple TV, Playstation etc.

    Still to ship social features that could redefine TV content discovery.


    Migration to the Prime Video org brought benefits but limited bold, innovative interaction experiments.

    Outcome 📈

    • Moments

    • Mood Canvas

    • Mood Canvas

    Future bets

Amazon is adding Prime Video originals to its free streaming service

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Amazon will juice its Freevee free streaming service with 100+ Amazon Originals in 2023

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Amazon Freevee is this year's biggest streaming success story

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