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aha streaming service

Designing 100% Regional OTT Platform

Aha is a unique OTT platform which delivers regional content all over the world. It aims to be one of the largest platforms that deliver content to users in their native language.

brief

aha is an Indian subscription video on-demand and over-the-top streaming service that offers Telugu and Tamil content. The principal purpose of this redesign was to bring a richer and more premium experience while keeping it simple. The target audience in mind was users ranging from Tier 1, 2, and 3 Indian cities. One of the main keywords emphasized was Glocal which meant global in terms of values, ethos, design elements, and experience and local in terms of simplicity. Some of the other requirements as mentioned by the stakeholders:

    • Make the app feature-rich by allowing users to seamlessly choose and change their content language along with their display language
    • Provide easy content discoverability, and parental lock features, and improve the current glitchy TV experience.
    • Design a seamless and enjoyable TV viewing experience – create guidelines and understand the interactions by studying remotes of various TVs and studying other apps on TV

      Product Discovery

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        Understanding brief Understood the purpose of
        redesign and problems to solve
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        Success metrics Studied which KPIs were used to
        measure the UX effectiveness
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        Brand positioning Discussed the OTT market behaviour
        of the target audience in these areas
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        Reviews Worked at resolving common pain
        points of exisiting customers
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        Questions/Suggestions Gatherthed more areas needed
        solving in the form of requirements
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        Vision Acknowledged behaviour of potenial
        users to solve their problems

      We covered the watching
      behavior of every user group this
      product intends to cater

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        Im Vamsi, a crazy binge watcher

        25 Years | Male | Telangana

        Vamsi works as a software engineer. He is a bachelor who lives with his parents. He is at work from 10 am-6 pm on weekdays. He has ample time after work, and he usually meets his friends. They binge-watch shows and always end up having huge debates so he always needs to

        Watch time:

        4-5 hrs/day

        Devices:

        Mobile, TV, Web

        Tech Saviness

        Behaviour

        • Discovers exclusive content
        • Debates with friends/family
        • Watches in transit
        • Joins movie clubs
        • Loves series, action, sport

        Pain Points

        • Needs seamsless switch
        • Personalized suggestions

        Takeaways

        • Consumes multiple languages
        • Uses multiple devices
        • Prime hours 8-12 pm
        • Experiment with technology
        • Prefers voice search on TV
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        Im Vasudha, I watch selected content

        29 Years | Female | Tamil Nadu

        Vasudha is married and has a lot of responsibilities. She works as a sales manager from 10 am to 6 pm. She watches TV shows with her husband and 2 children. She prefers light-hearted comedy, and family drama so that the family can spend some quality time together. She watches new shows but at her own pace and convenience.

        Watch time:

        3-4 hrs/day

        Devices

        Mobile, TV, Web

        Tech Saviness

        Behaviour

        • Watches specific genres
        • Switches devices to watch
        • Needs parental control
        • Joins movie clubs
        • Loves drama, comedy, series

        Pain Points

        • Less content
        • Personalized suggestions
        • Hard to search

        Takeaways

        • Discovers content on mobile/TV
        • Uses multiple devices
        • Prime hours 9-12 pm
        • Watches exclusive films.
        • Uses parental control.
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        Im Keshav, I watch anything and everything

        35 Years | Male | Andra Pradesh

        Keshava drives Ola auto from 8 am till 8 pm. He is crazy about Telugu movies and is completely star-studded. He enjoys watching movies while he is on the go as well! His day starts with driving auto and playing his favorite movie on the side and ends with the same. He uses Aha obsessively as that is the only platform he can find 100% Telegu movies.

        Watch time:

        7-8 hrs/day

        Devices:

        Mobile

        Tech Saviness

        Behaviour

        • Watches everything
        • Loves movie stars
        • Loyal towards stars
        • Watches Telugu content

        Pain Points

        • Hard to search
        • Personalized suggestions
        • Prefers voice search

        Takeaways

        • Discovers content on
        • Watches exclusive content
        • Prime hours 11-8 pm
        • Watches exclusive films.
        • Prefers voice search
      approach

      A revolutionary idea of having a single language streaming platform. An opportunity to increase user base and subscriptions by:

      • Personalization

        We create solutions keeping the focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process.

      • Consistency

        We focused on providing a seamless experience between all platforms - mobile, web, tablet, and TV

      • Learning curve

        For a minimum learning curve, we ensured the app was intuitive and the number of steps involved to reach a goal

      • Voice based Interactions

        To ensure ease of use for each persona, we enabled voice-based interactions for faster actions and decision making

      Define

      Our primary focus was to re-design the OTT app. We defined multiple problem statements to solve through design, by understanding our different user personas, journey maps, empathy maps, competitor analysis, information architecture, and task flows. Taking into consideration all the above points, we aimed to deliver a smooth and a seamless OTT viewing experience to an audience segment with varied technological adoptions, limitations, and language understanding.

      Once the approach was set and finalized, we started with mapping out the IA which shows the flow across the platforms and their connectivity.

      Based on the user stories & prerequisites, Lollypop design studio introduced exceptional & distinctive features in the portal.

      Structuring the information

      Prioritized user satisfaction and created
      IA considering user-specific needs

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      WIREFRAMES

      Once we had the IA finalized after iterations, we started with wireframes, Below is the high fidelity of wireframes that were created and later pushed to the Visual design stage. Keeping in mind all the above points, we need to ensure that the pain points and the opportunity of each person was addressed. We ensured a very smooth and simple onboarding process, followed by a very intuitive, dynamic, and visually rich homepage. We also made sure that the video player was feature-rich yet extremely simple for the ease of use of all personas. We revamped the entire TV experience by following familiar mental models to ensure ease of use for each persona

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      TYPOGRAPHY

      We chose Proxima Nova for simple, clear, and bold letters. Our team focused on the proportions, the spacing, and the overall look and feel. It didnt have a lot of fussy details or mannerisms. The open, circular forms gave it a friendly appearance, especially in the lowercase.

      We used Noto Sans for local languages to enhance engagement in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Noto is a multilingual font designed as an intermediate style between the modern and traditional. Users can switch display language between Tamil and Telugu in seconds.

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      COLOURS

      aha wished to bring in a new-wave of orange in entertainment for the Telugu-speaking audience, across the world

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      Primary 60%

      #B61A09 #FF6D2E

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      Primary 30%

      #101211 #8D4429

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      Primary 10%

      #2D3037 #3B4046

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      Secondary

      #FF6D2E

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      Secondary

      #109826 #44DA80

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      UI Design

      We evaluated our designs internally with proven practices to measure their effectiveness in regards to credibility and usability. The result was a cohesive experience ecosystem that felt curated, usable and useful for users.

      The value adds we brought in were an intuitive and interactive regionalized experience, a faster way of exploring content, and easy to use interface that gave a feeling of personalized experience and interfaces across Mobile, Web, and Television.

      Language

      • Top streaming service which offers Telugu and Tamil language content. Users select language before sighning up.
      • Pick movies they like and have suggestions based on languages. Users have the option to rate movies at the end so average ratings can be shown to guide other users.
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      Login

        • User signs up through multiple options some of which are autofilled making the overall process flexible, quick and smooth
        • The country code is added to lower the cognitive load
        • Users are made aware of the free content available to them. Improved discoverability through personalized content
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      Home & Details

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      Explore

      Designed new sections and focused on building brand new content every week to help users stay on the platform

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      Choose

      Included trailer on details pop up. Added more information like year of release, cast, type and maturity ratings for clarity

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      Watch

      Improved video player by grouping relevant content together to enhance the whole viewing experience

      Profile

      • Introduced profile creation so that it doesnt interfere with watching experiences of multiple users logging in via the same account on different devices.
      • Provided option to create and edit multiple user profiles. Designed a context-based layout for configurations/settings
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      aha has acquired one million users after
      its launch, predominantly markets of
      Andhra and Telangana

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      Conclusion

      What did we achieve from this project?

      • Seamlessly introduced payment process from TV to Mobile
      • Elevated user experience through easy personalization and easy navigation
      • Revamped the Login/Signup process to be more user friendly
      • Improved playback experience by providing features that weren't provided before
      • Improved TV experience by following familiar mental models.
      • Intuitive UI and simplified viewing experience
      • Built a multi-experience for users - Viewers are consuming content on multiple devices
      • Seamless delivery of content on multiple devices is no longer an option for OTT players, it is mandatory.

      What did we learn from this project?

      • In-depth research and competitor analysis play an important role in the output of the design.
      • Learned designing experiences for TV.
      • How to seamlessly build a multi-experience for users
      • While the variety and quality of the content will be important to acquiring new viewers, UI/UX will play a decisive role in retaining them
      • A simple and delightful user experience will always remain the most important factor that will define the success of any OTT platform.
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