Your Movie Mate — A UX/UI case study on Senscritique app

Stop swiping left. This is not just a date : this is a movie date, tailored for you !

This is how it goes. You love watching movies. You have the habit of rating so that you keep a trace of your whole journey as a cinephile. You do it on Senscritique app. You might think “ Actually, I use another app for that ” and, indeed, there are quite a few competitors on the market.

The market

By analysing the competitors, I found out that most of them have the same features than the Senscritique app : movie trailers, theaters information, users ratings, users reviews, favourite users. But there is a lack of customised suggestions in the majority of them, including Senscritique. What makes the app stands out is the brand, community-oriented and passion-focused.

Competitors analysis on the features

Brand positioning : Senscritique’s focus is on community and passion

The brief

With the competitors analysis in mind, I could focus on the original brief given to me : “ Senscritique is an app where people find, rate, review movies. The new feature is made for the users to find someone to watch a movie with, for the next time they go to the theater. ”

Problem statement

How can the user find her best movie mate for the next time she goes to the cinema ?

The usability testing

So I made a hi-fi prototype of the new feature called “My movie mate”. It includes a survey to know more about the user’s habits, and suggests one movie mate at a time.

Quote from a Senscritique app user

I interviewed 4 users for this usability test on the hi-fi prototype and I collected their pain points, good points, behaviours and ideas, and sorted them into categories : wording, uses, tastes, movies, interface, friends. There were recurrent pain points :

1. Unclear wording leading to a misunderstanding of some buttons
2. The new feature was too discreet and hard to find on the homepage
3. They felt the “ movie mate ” was imposed to them
4. The survey is not related enough to their tastes

The iteration

From the users’ insights, I made a new user flow where I added ideas such as a map, a filter system and a chatroom. I simplified the user flow and designed a second version of a hi-fi prototype focusing on the user’s goal : “ Find a new movie mate for the next she goes to the cinema. ” This is where it appears that Senscritique app who have a bigger role to play, compared to the user path where they ask friends on other platforms. Indeed, Senscritique has a big community, but it’s not widely used. The app is still quite niche, so some users I interviewed don’t have many friends they follow on the app, on the contrary to social medias such as Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. In the second user flow, I focus on a happy path where the user wants to find a movie mate in the Senscritique community.

Second version of the user flow

The solution

The second version of the prototype didn’t include any survey, but instead focused on those main points :

1. A more intuitive flow
2. A map based on localisation with nearby theaters and users
3. Movie choice first, movie mate second
4. A quick chat to discuss with the future movie mate beforehand

Hi-fi prototype of “My movie mate” feature

What comes next ?

I’ll do another usability test for this second version in order to observe whether this version is more intuitive and accurate than the first one. I’ll measure the success of this new prototype in two ways :

1. The user achieves the task in a smooth and intuitive way
2. The user is satisfied with the movie, theater, movie mate and time slot.

Thank you for reading ! 🎬