Screenings FYC

In compliance with my non-disclosure agreement, I’ve obscured confidential information. This case study presents my own ideas and work and may have been summarized, re-created or altered to maintain confidentiality.

One of the best measures of a product’s success is user engagement and profitability. This app was created as a solution to an industry-wide problem, but will always be faced with the challenge of its limited user-base.

Academy and guild members are only in the thousands, which is a far reach from the active daily users of comparable products. Aside from the limited audience, it will also always be a “members only” type of service. This added another layer of complexity that I needed to solve for.

Due to the clientele, the experience needed to feel premium and polished. This would be an app made for the entertainment industry elite, showcasing the best works of the year for the very filmmakers and crew who made them.

The first challenge of this project was to find a way to monetize while still providing a valuable service. I was attempting to build something unprecedented.

First off, there was an aggregation problem. Starting in the early fall, graphical mailers and invitations are mailed out, informing members of screenings in their area. Usually, this is through either an e-mail blast or the postal service. If the mailer isn’t received or it goes into a spam filter, it’s likely never seen.

Each studio has its own website for awards screenings, but it often changes slightly each year. It isn’t always mobile-friendly and sometimes brings security flaws because it is only usually updated once a year.

About half the year, the pages look like the one below – one we’ve all seen at some point. This was terrible for experience.

I also discovered that there wasn’t a consolidated list of information, nor a way to view everything together. Members must visit each website manually and submit a form, then wait for an e-mail confirmation. If plans change or a guest needs to be added, the e-mail chain continues and is often incomplete.

The first project goal was to find a way to pull information from different sources and create a secure, scalable database as more information was added.

This became the core foundation of the app and developed into an aggregate platform crucial to organizing data. It would also give me a launchpad to create a revenue stream in future versions.

Now that I had a lot of data being pulled from many places, I needed to determine the use cases. It could be simple and straightforward. After interviewing several guild and academy members, I created a realistic user journey and started conceptualizing what this experience may look like.

Then, I created a prototype using InVision and started testing ideas. People were excited! I took the feedback and made some usability changes.

A great experience is important with any product. It needed to have a great look and feel. I wanted it to feel as comfortable to use as something like Netflix or Hulu, apps that are familiar and well-designed.

This is a product for busy people, so it wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time logging in or learning something new. Displaying the artwork immediately would enable the user to select a screening quickly, reserve a spot and repeat.

I determined to leave out the option to watch trailers or clips, especially since I didn’t yet have any plans for a CDN (content delivery network). Plenty of apps exist for this and it was determined to be out of scope. Balance was key.

In addition to balance, the integrity of the platform is mandatory. Members include celebrities and well-known filmmakers. It was necessary to build this product with their security in mind. It also had to be scalable to meet future business needs.

In the process, I learned that the websites often have expired security certificates, which can cause software exploits and browser issues. I found a solution for this by partnering with engineers and data scientists to build a ledger using a private blockchain. In order to convince the studios and get their support, security was paramount.

More ugly error messages.

Visually, I turned to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and designed the authentication method using Face ID (and Touch ID for older phones). This process would evolve in future versions, but having security in mind from the beginning was already starting to solidify the proof of concept.

After several iterations and rounds of testing, I arrived at the first official design. The product was testing well and provided great feedback as to what features to implement next. The screens below were finalized and through more testing,

I was able to generate a buzz in the production community and determine what direction to move forward in.

Another big problem to solve became clear. There wasn’t a great way to find events that weren’t tied to screenings. The current method is e-mail correspondence. Utilizing the existing design, incorporating events fit like a glove.

The biggest goal with this project was to become the standard in which screenings and industry events are managed. The more members that sign on will provide an opportunity for more content engagement, social impressions and exposure.

In a post-pandemic world, events and screenings are being re-imagined as in-person and hybrid events are normalized. The true potential of this product is still being explored, and the future holds great new opportunities to be discovered.

In the next version, there are plans to expand the database to include more members as the industry evolves, introduce a content delivery network for curated content, and monetize using an ad-based model and API keys.