Disney Movies Anywhere

Your movies, together at last

THE CHALLENGE

Disney established itself as the only Hollywood studio with a successful digital movie locker with Disney Movies Anywhere, which I helped design. But a few years in, other studios took notice. Disney led the charge for an industry-wide movie locker service along with four other major studios, including Sony and Fox, and I was tapped to lead the UX for the new product. But how would this new service provide a high-quality movie fanatic experience while appealing to the wider public?

FANS COME FIRST

Leading the UX design with the help of an outside visual design agency, I combined my historical knowledge of Disney Movies Anywhere with new research to create a product worthy of Hollywood's heavy hitters. Disney Movies Anywhere's audience consisted of moms and very young children, but this new product would need to appeal to the Hollywood studio's diverse audiences. I held design workshops to determine these new personas and mapped features according to each persona. Then I created wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes to test in-person with movie lovers. Furthermore, I designed proof-of-concept prototypes used by executives to inspire the other studios with our vision.   

Among all the different personas, franchise fandom was central to their motivations. We designed for these fans with movie detail pages that prioritized exclusive content, surfaced popular trailers, and shared movie news. Curated collections catered to favorite franchises and characters, and a recommendation engine would smartly suggest new movies to buy. Users could also download movies for offline viewing. 

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Movie Detail Screen. Left: Landscape Tablet. Movie that is currently in theaters with a CTA to view theater showtimes.
Feature to watch the movie trailer featured prominently, a favorite action among users. Right: Full screen. 

YOUR MOVIES, TOGETHER

With Movies Anywhere, users can instantly connect their movie purchases in iTunes, Amazon Video, Google Play or Vudu into a cloud-based digital locker. They can buy new movies and watch their collection on any connected device or through any connected provider. But users had a difficult time understanding that they still had to purchase movies, rather than stream "freely" as perceived with Netflix. Through user testing many iterations of a light-weight onboarding experiences, I designed one that seamlessly connected accounts while easily explaining the purchase-based model. 

Movies Anywhere was just that — anywhere — so we designed solutions for iOS, Android and web as well as working with partners for Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire and Roku. Each platform was designed natively to suit the interaction model familiar to each user. By the end of the project, I was fully versed in the different subtleties of each platform.

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Top: High-fidelity comps tested with users on tablets to determine the most frictionless onboarding flow. 
 Bottom Left: Video Play UI. Left: Chromecast view. Bottom Right: Player controls. DVD chapters available for titles in Movies Anywhere. 
 

THE RESULTS

Film fans and studios alike love Movies Anywhere, and hailed it as an industry achievement. In just 3 months, users streamed more than 3 million hours of content and stored nearly 80 million movies in digital lockers. The studios have released exclusive content available only on the platform, including an action scene for "Kingsman 2," and plans to releases thousands of more hours of additional content. Happy watching!

3M

Hours streamed in the first 3 months

80M

Movies in digital lockers in the first three months

7500+

Titles in the catalog at launch

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BOBBY FEINGOLD

Product designer and manager with over 10 years experience working for Disney, Live Nation, and more Fortune 400 companies