HBO: profile prototype usability study

HBO turned to our team at Anthro-Tech to conduct an in-person usability study to observe people’s use and management of user profiles HBO Now. The goal of the study was to better understand users’ needs, pain points, and opportunities to improve features and design to provide better experience. Targeted customers include people sharing digital video streaming accounts such as partner pairs, families with young children, families with tweens and teens and two adults not residing in the same household.

My Role

I worked closely with our lead UX researcher as well as HBO’s research and UX team. I helped with facilitating the study, with the data analysis, and with reporting and recommendations.

Goals of the usability study

The goal of the prototype usability study was to inform the HBO team about their users’ attitudes toward user profiles in general, their preferences around profiles and how users typically use profiles.

We also wanted to observe how users complete some tasks such as creating a profile, editing a profile and switching between profiles.

The study

We conducted in-person, moderated 1:1 usability studies with 10 participants at the HBO lab. The initial interview portion of the study focused on participants’ motivations, behaviors, routines, expectations and relationship with user profiles. The second part of the interview focused on observing participants interacting with the HBO multi-user profile prototype. We had the participants go through some key tasks and asked them to complete these tasks. We asked follow-up and clarifying questions to better understand perceptions and user behavior with the prototype. Quantitative and qualitative data such as task success and satisfaction ratings was tracked via recordings and note taking of the sessions.

Some of the prototype screens used in the usability study

Study outcome and findings

I worked closely with our lead UX researcher to develop a high-level emerging themes memo to share the initial themes observed during the study. I created an affinity map of the emerging themes to help visualize the grouping of these emerging themes. We also created a formal report presentation deck that included not only the emerging themes but also our recommendations around UX, design and feature improvements and refinement.

Analysis: Emerging themes and findings

↑Back to Top