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WEBSITE DESIGN • AIRTEL DIGITAL • 2020 - 2021
Reimagining Xstream’s Web Experience
Overview
Airtel is a leading global telecommunications company headquartered in New Delhi, India. Xstream is one of the company's OTT and DTH product offerings with a 70+ M daily active user base. I joined the team as a sole experience designer in 2019 and have been growing with the brand ever since.
Role
User Research
UX & UI Design
Testing
Data Analysis
Methods
Research
User interactions
Conceptualisation
Ideation Workshops
Wireframes
Rapid Prototypes
Data Synthesis
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Miro
Whiteboards
TLDR
Stakeholders
Product Managers
Content Curators
Developers
Content Partners
QA
APPROACH • PROJECT & STAKEHOLDERS
How did we go about the project?
01. Insights & Ideation
Worked with 2 product managers to uncover user insights from the data pool and discussed concepts and ideas to build a feasible roadmap for the project.
02. Experience Strategy
Created frameworks and prototypes to share the vision with the team, and build a stronger content strategy. This helped to evangelize ideas, gain alignment and drive decision making.
03. Planning & Scope Definition
Defined the product scope with my product managers where we balanced business goals with user needs. I helped prioritize and negotiate features for the first phase and beyond.
04. Walkthrough & Coordination
Presented the concept to all teams - development, content, growth and core teams to get suggestions on feasibility, timelines and gaps. This project required big developmental changes and understanding the team’s load was crucial.
05. Prototypes & Development
Designed the entire experience and interface across web platforms - desktop, tablet and mobile. Reimagined the users' streaming experience based on the insights from the customer care team and useful product criticism on the playstore and appstore.
06. Collaboration & Ownership
Being new to web design I had to build my credibility in the team and understand how things work on the inside. My design head helped me understand the values of team building and the importance of taking ownership.
APPROACH • PROCESS
The design and project process followed
We followed the design thinking process as outlined below. Through extensive research, user interactions and market understanding with testing, our goal was to identify a solution that could help users engage with the platform comfortably and help the business grow as per the changing user behaviours seamlessly.
Problem
PROBLEM • HOW MIGHT WE?
Help Xstream cope with user’s shifting behaviours from
broadcast to binge consumption?
Build Binge-watching Behaviors
Move the tier two and three regional users' consumption from live tv to on-demand to increase stream-time and user retention.
Personalize Content for Users
Build strategies around personalization on the platform to increase content consumption and retain users, especially for users from language-specific regions in a multilingual country like India.
Reimagine Streaming Experiences
Design unified immersive and delightful video player experiences for binge-watching and quicker feature accessibility for all users.
Build for Future Business Scalability
Redesign the web navigation in order to accommodate business expansions and increase content discovery along with partner visibility for the future.
The overall goal was to make the platform more usable, perceptive, and customer-centric to easily enter new markets.
PROBLEM • CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
We asked the customers what stops them from coming
back to Xstream?
Research
RESEARCH • SECONDARY MARKET STUDY
Understanding who we are trying to compete
RESEARCH • LITERATURE REVIEW • QUANTITATIVE
Going back to our previous market and user research
Mobile Video Consumption Landscape Mapping by Nielsen for Airtel
The objective of the research was to get a holistic understanding of consumers mobile video consumption habits, triggers and barriers to aid airtel tv in Increasing footprint through both net adds and regular usage, and sharp focus on potential revenue segments.
01. User Profile
Mobile device users of metros, tier 1 and tier 2 cities
Age: 15 -55 years
Female, Male and Kids
02. Centers
4 Metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata
4 Tier 1: Lucknow, Ludhiana, Cochin and Bhubaneshwar
4 Tier 2: Sonipat, Guntur, Bilaspur and Siliguri
03. Sample Size
6000 (500 samples spread across 12 centers)
2500 (210/ 205 samples per centre across 12 centres)
25 qualitative DIs conducted in 5 centres
RESEARCH • LITERATURE REVIEW • QUANTITATIVE
User segments and opportunities within
Learnings from the study
Cellular to Wifi data consumption changed a lot from 2015 to 2018 from 10:90 to 36:64 respectively. This led to growth in consumption of various segments like image apps, music apps, mobile payments and video streaming.
The time spent on the phone by an average user in India increased a lot over quarters from 181 min/day to 194 min/day from 2015 to 2018 which led to increasing streaming engagements from 5.8 min/day to 26.1 min/day.
User Interview Highlights
To understand the users pain points better the user research team conducted interviews with cross platform users. The team tried to capture experiential, technical, and emotional pains and gains while using Xstream and its products.
“ I usually come back for my live tv show recordings, but i have to always go the long way to find the show! ”
“ The content searching is pain! Shows me random and unrelated content. ”
“ I would love better recommendations, the featured movies and shows are always the same. ”
“ I would like continuity across devices. ”
“ The app doesn’t feel appealing enough to use! ”
“ I would like to separate my profile from that of my parents. Our content keeps merging. ”
RESEARCH • QUALITATIVE
Understanding paradigm shifts amidst Covid
Consumption and behaviour
Digitalisation across the globe has changed the way media is consumed. Increase in number of internet connections, better networks, technological innovations and availability of smart devices have resulted in the rise of new OTT media that offers services to viewers directly via the internet. With the 45% estimated growth, India is likely to emerge as the second-biggest OTT market (after US) to reach a value of ₹138 billion by the end of fiscal 2023.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we learned that the content consumption model has transformed from being stationary to dynamic. The user is now more alert and necessitates a consistent and continuous feed of information across geographies. The users ranged changed immensely as well, earlier the age group used to vary between 15 to 35 which has further stretched to 12 to 55 due to the pandemic. People who were conscious Set up box and DTH consumers moved to more VOD content categories.
We at Xstream knew that our users would need more to keep them engaged and with more stream-time we also need to focus on how we could make it as comfortable for them as possible. Their experience should be simple and delightful.
Define
DEFINE • USERS AND PRODUCTS
Who are our users and where do they come from?
Target Audiences of Airtel
Being a telecommunication service provider, the target audience of Airtel is vast and is not influenced by age, gender, place of residence, income, social distinction, and any such factors. Airtel has various services that attract both individuals and companies across varied industries.
The customer segment for Airtel Xstream are:
Airtel Users
Postpaid
Prepaid
Broadband
DTH
Airtel Black
Airtel Bank
Xstream Stick Users
The most significant consumer segment for Xstream during the pandemic was Broadband, Prepaid and Postpaid users. These segments showed maximum adoption of the OTT platform in the past two years.
DEFINE • CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TODAY
User journey and empathy map
Salema
Homemaker
New Delhi
33 years
“I like to watch serials alone as it feels like it’s my me-time”
Salema is a homemaker and a mother of 2 kids. She loves to watch a few serials and night, and sometimes she misses them as she gets busy with her chores and tries to catch up with the recordings eaten at night. She discusses what happened in the show with her friends the next day and can’t afford any spoilers.
Mapping derivations and learnings
Salema’s entire consumption journey is frustrating and disappointing. She has been using the platform for a long time and expects some level of understanding and personalisation. She feels her needs are being neglected constantly and would be willing to give up the platform as soon as she finds a better one with similar offerings and a better experience.
DEFINE • BUSINESS STRUCTURE
Xstream Business Model
DEFINE • WHITE BOARDING
Aligning business needs and defining user needs
DEFINE • ANALAYSING THE EXPERIENCE
Learning from our mistakes
Ideate
IDEATE • WEBSITE STRUCTURING
Information Architecture
IDEATE • LOW FIDELITY SKETCHES DESKTOP
Iterating and Exploring
IDEATE • LOW FIDELITY SKETCHES MOBILE
Iterating and Exploring
IDEATE • MID-FIDELITY SKETCHES
Wireframing
Prototype
PROTOTYPE • HIGH-FIDELITY SCREENS
The Final Experience
Learnings
LEARNINGS • DESIGN LEARNINGS
Things I learned during this process as a UX designer
📱
Always think mobile first when designing websites
Mobile devices continue to climb year over year indicating that more users are searching while on the go. If the experience is great on smaller devices there is a high probability of them consuming content on larger screens too.
🧐
Consider natural scanning patterns
People in the Western world usually read left to right and from top to bottom. A design that goes against this pattern will present a learning curve for your visitors. Well-designed websites typically layout their content in a “F” reading shape or “Z” reading shape.
🧱
Navigation is the cornerstone of usability
It’s the main interaction technique on the Internet. Having good website navigation is crucial for ensuring that visitors can find what they’re looking for.
🚨
Design error pages!
The dead links need to be treated well and do not have to be simple 404 error pages. User, this to push similar content or redirect them back to home or the previous page.
🦄
Don’t be afraid to do something different
Your website is your face to the world. Why not stand out from the crowd with something different! People usually ask if any other brand is doing it and its success rates. If you believe the design would create an impact, it's okay to fight for it.
👩🏻💻
Design for all developmental phases
As a designer, we imagine designs holistically and design the entire experience in one go, but the development happens in stages so keep in mind to design for all those stages so that your developing team is able to see the feasibility of the design without getting overwhelmed.
🚶🏻♀️
Reduce user’s journey to destination
Always keep the three-click rule in mind, which says that your viewers should never be more than three clicks away from what they are looking for.
🖋
Microcopy and UX copy can make or break
It could make or break the experience a user has on the platform. Consider working on more human tonality and language while designing your website.
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