The 2020 Netflix x Adobe Creative Jam challenged UX/UI designers to create a third-party desktop app where the community can celebrate shared stories together through communal and authentic experiences, with the theme of a shared virtual movie experience. In our attempt to solve this problem, we created a data-driven platform combined with the best parts of other well known streaming services. Our team scored 88/100 points and placed in the top 6% amongst 985 teams where we virtually presented our concept to over 3000 individuals, including judges from Adobe and Netflix.

With only 48 hours to design and prototype 15+ screens, we knew we needed to work quickly when doing research. As a team we started to brainstorm ideas and potential features for our virtual users. To get a sense of who our target audience is, we interviewed a handful of people who have and consistently use streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ to analyze their needs and painpoints when using these services. Here are a few of our key findings:

• Miss watching movies in the theaters or having people over to watch content together.
• Frustrated with the inaccuracy of recommendations that the app's algorithm develops for them.
• Want to engage in realtime conversations before, during, or after watching a film.
• Wish they could create a list or playlist of their favorite content/content creators and share with their friends and family.

Final HMW:

How might we create a virtual movie experience where families and friends can engage, watch, and share content collaboratively on a single platform?

After the user interviews we were able to understand who our target audience is, what they need, and what we can do to help. We developed several How Might We (HMW) statements to come up with the following goals for our platform:

• A platform allowing users to schedule and join watch parties that can be watched remotely and privately with friends, family, or world-wide.
• Sharing personalized playlists with friends and family that show their favorite films, directors, actors, etc.
• Suggesting content based on their viewing habits and recommending what friends are currently watching.
• Virtually watching with others while allowing users to chat and highlight favorite lines, characters, and scenes.

After finalizing the goals for our web-app, we started wireframing.

We decided to go with a dark mode UI for our web app because we wanted to match the same environment a user would get at a movie theater. People usually watch content in a dim or low-lit area so our platform's dark background wouldn't be harsh on the eyes when transitioning from the video player.

Viscio allows movie lovers to experience their favorite content without leaving their couch. Users will be able to join and host watch parties with people from around the globe, highlight their favorite scenes and lines, watch live commentary from their favorite actors and directors, and create customizable playlists to share with friends.

This was our second Adobe Creative Jam design challenge and I am so proud of my team for placing in the top 6% amongst 985 other teams! Our goal was to create a virtual movie theater experience where communities can celebrate shared stories. In the end, we realized that we were focusing more on design than functionality and may have implemented one too many features that can cause the user to feel overwhelmed.

The next step to getting this web app on the market would be to reevaluate the users needs and painpoints in order to minimize the amount of features, take a closer look at Accessibility guidelines to make sure our platform is inclusive to all users, and eventually move to the development phase.