Context
Africa's largest mobile network operator sought to create a content marketplace and streaming platform tailored to the needs and tastes of users in their 21 operating countries.
Goal
Create an accessible mobile platform for customers who may be unfamiliar with streaming services. Prioritise discoverability of relevant content and services across video, music, gaming and lifestyle categories.
TLDR
Build the best content marketplace and streaming platform for African customers.
What's The Problem?
Historically the African market has been woefully underserved by content providers and major streaming platforms that many of us take for granted. Popular services such as Netflix and Disney+ are only available in a few territories. eSports servers and gaming support are largely non-existent. Moreover, the availability of local content is minimal, lowering the appeal of such services.
Many technical and infrastructure challenges prevent these services from flourishing however, this presents a unique opportunity for anyone willing to source and deliver fresh, local, content to hungry customers.
So, plan and design a unified content marketplace and streaming platform that can be rolled out in 21 countries, designed from scratch for an increasingly digitally engaged African market with specific tastes and many technical and infrastructure limitations. No big deal, right? :)
A Clean Slate
It was a chilly September morning when I met with my new client. We quickly began ideating on what this platform could be. What features would it have? Who was it for? How would we integrate content providers?
Among these questions was an obvious one. If this was version 2, what was the original like?
Thankfully, I was given complete freedom and told to ignore what had come before. Instead, I was simply asked to, "make it as good as it can be."
Message received!
What Do African Customers Want?
Armed with our ideas and a rough set of requirements I began wondering what exactly potential customers might be looking for in a streaming platform.
While I had worked extensively in African markets before, I had never tried to deliver entertainment media to millions. Thus began a feverish research challenge to understand all 21 territories, their needs and desires.
Part of this challenge was trying to create an experience that would translate across a hugely diverse continent with high variability in infrastructure quality and familiarity with common streaming service behaviours.
All Your Favourite Content At Your Fingertips
With the foundation laid we began engaging with content providers to bring their services and bouquets onboard. Unlike most services that focus on just one type of content, like video or music, we were to offer up five: Video, Music, Games, Sport and Lifestyle.
I had to find a way to create a standard for the metadata that we would ingest. How and where content was displayed would be vital in aiding customers to find content that was relevant to them.
We defined a minimum requirement for a card component that could serve as a base for any type of content that the services could throw at us.
Navigating A Continent Worth Of Content
But how do you find anything with such a huge variety of content available? We iterated for weeks in an attempt to surface a menu system that was easy to understand for customers who have never used a streaming service. Thankfully we had a robust metadata structure in place to help us refine searches and filters.
Treating Customers Fairly
My client had recently established a set of rules to "Treat Customers Fairly". I was rather pleased that they had gone to the effort of ensuring customers were kept happy. But what would that mean for the platform I was designing?
With so many service providers all billing a customer through our platform it became imperative that we allow users to easily manage those subscriptions.
No dark patterns, no hidden "unsubscribe" buttons and no hoops. In just a few taps, and with complete transparency, a user could unsubscribe from any service. They also have the option to resume their subscriptions at any time making it easy for them to manage their bill.
This is especially important in African markets where customers are often paid weekly and budget their airtime very carefully.
Discoverability: Digging Deep Into Dynamic Data & Demographics
An area that I had little experience in, but fell deeply in love, is analytics. And I don't just mean charts and graphs.
Thanks to the invaluable published resources of services like Netfllx and Spotify, I was able to propose and design a recommendation engine.
By combining various factors we formulated our first batch of intelligent categories that are based on an individual's personal preferences, usage and the behaviour of similar users.
While it was a first attempt, I'm really proud of how useful this feature became. It was often a talking point among the executives we presented to.
Connecting All The Dots
With all of the major features in place we were ready to roll out our product into our first market: Ghana.
Offering a huge catalogue of content from multiple services proved to be a hit. Users could easily subscribe and consume content. They could easily unsubscribe to save money on services they weren't using. They could easily discover content and we were making recommendations based on their personal taste profiles
A resounding success!
What I Learned From This Project
Designers often talk about how empathy is our superpower, but this project really challenged me to check my privilege. Most of us in the tech industry are extremely lucky to have access to services like Netflix, Spotify and other premium content offerings. However, to an average customer in some places, these platforms are simply inaccessible and don't offer anything appealing for the price.
When you really dig into the demographics of underserved communities you gain perspective. These users have extremely limited entertainment budgets, they're on older Android devices which are probably shared with other family members and what I take for granted simply wouldn't work for them.
I try to take this humility and these learnings with me when tackling new projects.
A Reminder Of The Journey
I kept the original sketch from the chilly Monday morning when this project started. It's served me well as a reminder of the journey I've been on with this project.
