In 2023 Nov, Coupang Play introduced the Group Watch feature, allowing users to watch content together and chat in real-time, aiming to enhance the content community experience.
Skill & Responsibility
UX Research ・ Web & Mobile Design ・ Product Strategy
Project timeline
Jan 19, 2023 - Sep 20, 2023
Company
Coupang Play
Team
1 Product Designer, 1 PM, 7 Developers
The Group Watch feature was part of the company's vision to empower content communities. However, market research revealed significant obstacles:
Lack of Motivation
While 30% of users (from platforms like Watcha, Disney+, and Naver Sports) tried Group Watch at least once, more than half did not continue using it. Many users did not feel the feature was necessary for their content watching experience.
However, those who actively used the feature enjoyed the experience of having others online to watch with, even without much interaction.
Host Engagement
Only 2% of users became hosts, but those who did were very likely to promote the feature.
However, once users experienced hosting, they were highly likely to promote the Group Watch feature. Hosts had an impressive NPS score of 55, compared to -40 for participants, highlighting a strong opportunity to boost engagement through encouraging hosting.
This indicated that group watching online was primarily appealing to a niche audience. The challenge was to encourage more users to try Group Watch and turn them into highly engaged users.
To address this, I conducted in-depth interviews with users who actively used the Group Watch feature on other platforms. These interviews helped identify the key values and opportunities we needed to focus on. Based on this research, I developed the product strategy and design vision.
Based on initial market research, I developed the following in-depth interview research hypotheses:
So, the in-depth interviews focused on these primary questions:
Generally, people think, "I don't need the Group Watch feature."
However, research revealed a clear opportunity: in the first phase, we need to make users feel, "I want to use Group Watch," by emphasizing that watching together is more fun than watching alone. This is the primary value that heavy Group Watch users seek.
While making Group Watch fun is essential, the effort required to create rooms as hosts is a significant barrier. The low percentage of hosts on other platforms highlights this issue. Building the Group Watch feature is expensive, so I suggested to the product team that we focus on the following for the MVP phase:
Based on research insights and our design goal, I generated specific feature ideas and scoped them for the MVP with my squad team.
Internal testing led to a new hypothesis: less text information would drive quicker and easier discovery of Group Watch rooms.
One design hypothesis is that emphasizing 'chat' would effectively convey the 'fun' aspect, encouraging more users to try the Group Watch feature.
On October 31, 2021, CoupangPlay's Group Watch feature was successfully launched. In the first month, about 20% users utilized this feature, significantly boosting engagement:
Retention
Group Watch users showed an average of 15% (up to 17%) higher weekly retention compared to non-users.
Visit Frequency within 30 days
Playback Duration
Observing user feedback and usage patterns provided valuable insights for future product phases:
1) Users enjoyed creating funny room names and interacting with others
2) Content with large fandoms, like Harry Potter or newly released reality shows, was especially popular for Group Watch, with users actively engaging in chat.
