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​CINEMO
Let’s Stay Connected And Get Entertained.
Re-imaging the streaming experience for bringing distant people together.
Staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic, with nearly all public places called off, we have been spending more of our lives online to seek out entertainment on the streaming services.
The Virus Has Changed Our Way To Live.
However,
streaming services help us get entertained, people are longing to spend time together with their beloved.
OPPORTUNITY
What if we can re-imagine the online watching experience by combining the streaming services and social media outlets so that people can enjoy the movies together?
SOLUTION
Cinemo is a website built during the special time of COVID-19. Our team desires to offer an interactive experience that the users can enjoy movies with friends and family.
“The exciting experience involves many processes. [The joy] is not just happening at the moment when the movie is playing.”
Discover
HOW TO GET THERE?
To gather inspirations for our unique watching experience, we conducted researches via:
• Conducting interviews with individuals
• Observations of individuals' behaviors
• Reading journal articles and blogs
User Journey
People like to get excited about upcoming movies (think about the furor that grows around the Star Wars movie before it was shown). Likewise, it can be very fulfilling to discuss a movie after watching it together.
For this reason, we realized that we need to encompass the entire journey.
IDEATING AND CRAFTING
Our goal is not just to create an invitation form, but also to help people get in touch with one another.
Thus, the very important thing is to make communication convenient.
HOW WE DID IT?
Pick up a movie
Select friends to invite
Time and setting
Finish invitation
The users could start an invitation by using the “invite friends” button. Within the process, the users can “pick up a movie to watch”, “select friends to invite” and “set up time and authorization”.
Group chat
Once the invitation has been sent out, the system will automatically create a chat room for the group.
From research, people are always very excited about upcoming movies, and we thus provide our users a place to discuss the upcoming movie they are about to watch, connect with their friends/family, and get aquatinted with new friends.
To better understand watching movies remotely, we invited our friends to watch movies remotely with us via Zoom, and we analyzed the participants’ behaviors via observations and interviews.
Participants felt distant due to limited interactions
• Participants rarely look at each other because they think having someone’s face on screen is rather distractive.
• Participants don’t talk much. The reason is not that they have no thought to share, but they are afraid they might interrupt others when talking.
How do we design to make people feel closer?
Analogous to the force between two magnets, sharing feelings attract individuals to each other and keeps them together. For this reason, we know that we need to emphasize design direction on sharing feelings.
From talks with people, we discovered that watching a movie together often requires multi-tasking. Thus, we also want to obtain a balance between watching experience and interactions.
Sharing reactions of the key moments
Instead of giving a firm ‘No’ to the video function, we decide to make it into a different form.
We name it “React-cam” which users who authorized this function will be recorded during the key moments of the movie, and later then will be asked if they’d like to share or delete their reactions.
Share your opinion and see if you’re in the majority
Polls are very quick ways to share thoughts and get responses from others since they only need to do a single click.
It as well creates a sense of closeness when we know that our friends feel the same with us, and even they don’t, it could become a good topic to discuss.
Communication doesn’t always require words
Based on the interviews, we knew that people don’t want to take too much attention away from the movie's content. Thus, we keep exploring different ways that people use to communicate.
The gesture function doesn't require much attention. It’s convenient, and also visually straightforward.
“When I’m meeting online,
I feel everyone is staring at me.”
People’s tolerance of silence on screen is a lot lower than in real life. Afraid to raise a topic when everyone is staring at you for worrying the topic is not interesting.
HOW CAN WE REDUCE THE MOMENTS OF SILENCE?
On the discussion page, the users could see all of the poll results which provide interesting topics for discussions and opportunities to bond with friends/ family.
The list of frequently asked questions is generated by other users. The FAQ list also creates topics for discussion. We hide the answers intentionally since we want to encourage internal discussions before the users read the answers on their own.
THE END OF CONVERSATION DOESN’T MEAN THE END OF THE JOY
Recall User Journey
As the discussion ends, our users' emotion drops back down to normal.
Could we end up the discussion with the start of a new invitation so the whole experience forms an endless circle?
“There’s always a long hallway with movie posters...
I always got attracted and went like ’Oh I wanna watch this! Let’s come back another time!‘”
While the movie posters could just be the advertising strategy of the cinemas, these posters actually play rather important roles in our online cinema.
Getting everyone online at the same time is hard, why not take this great opportunity to pick another movie?
The recommended list is based on the movie the users just watched. The users could start a new invitation and leave with expectations for the next round of gathering.
Quarantine and Isolation are depressing, almost like being locked in a box.
We want to convey to people the idea of stepping out just a bit out of the box so that they can enjoy their life while still staying safe.
Color pink means friendship and inner peace, and color blue associates with depth and stability.
We use the combination of these two colors to encourage people at this very special time to stay faithful and be supportive of each other.
REFLECTIONS
Collaborating remotely is a very unique experience for all of us. Throughout the process, we’ve explored and learned various ways to better convey our ideas and communicate with each other.
Also, only having 3 days to deliver our concept is a fun and great experience that helps strengthen my ability to work smartly and communicate efficiently.
​
​Team:
​Aris Hu, Sandy Cheng, Sicong Tang.
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