Prime Video is a membership-based subscription streaming service by Amazon that offers movies, TV shows and live TV. Access requires an Amazon Prime membership and add-on subscription are available as well on Prime Video, which allow users to stream across devices and outline downloads.
X-Ray
Prime Video has a unique feature of “X-Ray”, which is an interactive feature that displays contextual information related to the user’s current user’s screen. It offers cast details, actor name and background music information while the video is still playing, the user won’t have to stop or backtrack. This feature can be found in the right bottom corner of the screen and will be directly activated once being clicked, it appears as a high transparent pop up window on top of the video, providing the additional information that does not distract users from viewing.
The system provides users with context-specific relevant information. Unlike most other streaming platforms require users to zoom out or even pause the video to view cast details or backtrack for music recognition. The system automatically knows the scene, saving users from doing extra research and maintaining an immersive viewing experience.
Contents – Subscription & Marketplace
The homepage features personalized recommendations, trending movies or TV shows and a “ Continue Watching” section that visually enables users to explore the contents and continue unwatched viewing directly. However, the integration of free and paid content creates a complex interface that confuses users. Based on the design and operation of other streaming services, most users have the conceptual model that once they become a member, everything in the platform should be available to them. Prime Video is putting Prime movies and Rent/Buy movies into the same category of movies. This is a design issue that does not only appear in the homepage, it exists in library pages and the movies are being integrated as well. There are also movies with both signs of prime and rent&buy, even if the user figured out what both sign means, the user will have to open the movie and look for detailed descriptions on what does both signs mean.
This creates the issue with Discoverability. Users will find difficulties when trying to differentiate between the ones that require extra charge and others that can watch immediately. They always have to click into the movie detail page to verify. Despite the fact that there is a sign of “Prime” in the corner of some movies as the signifiers of the difference, the design of the signifier can easily be missed when browsing. The variety of colors from movie covers is making the sign less likely to be noticed, which might lead to disappointments when users spend unnecessary efforts on movie selection. Meanwhile, the sign used for rent&buy is unlikely to be interpreted as purchase, which leads to user confusion on the functionalities.
Proposed Design Refinements
The current design of filter is only used for switching genre and trending topics, it can be elaborated to have more functionality. The design should apply constraints to restrict the feedback of the system, so that users will receive more targeted results which avoids their possible frustrations and the mapping is connected. Once the feedback from the system meets the user’s expectation, the user experience will be enhanced, users can feel their actions are leading themselves to their desired results.
Conclusion
Prime Video is a platform that contains features that provides users with a satisfying experience without interruption, but there is still room for improvement on how Prime Video can organize their library and marketplace with a more clear indication of the differences to the user’s conceptual model, the usability design will be smoother.