Wander
Never Search Again…
A new way to discover film and shows.
UI Design
Interaction Design
Product Design
Overview
My Part
UI design
UX interaction design
Component making
Prototype design
Challenge
Balancing the option: I spend a lot of time making decisions on how to display the content while maximizes user's interest and creator's support.
Problem
"Search" is overrated.
You just finished the hottest movie of the moment and now you’re bored. You want to watch something else, but instead, you find yourself staring at the search bar, adjusting filters like a DJ. Thirty minutes later, you give up—nothing catches your interest.
Search works well when you know exactly what you're looking for. But most of the time, you don’t. The absence of meaningful constraints in search turns film and show discovery into a frustrating deadlock.
"Featured" is boring.
On the other hand, featured films and shows offer little to no active interaction with the user, making it harder to explore beyond the suggested options. This passive approach limits discovery and keeps users within a narrow selection.
Final Design
A revolutionary multi-format streaming app WITHOUT search
Watching shorts, full films/shows, and analysis all in one app, but discovered by "interactive chance" instead of searching for content.
Onboarding
Discover without search and never miss your content.
Start wandering
Scroll shorts vertically to find interesting contents, and then dive deep horizontally into the filmic work.
Explore everything
Horizontal explore entire content for a specific filmic work, including shorts, full, and analysis.
For shows, you can also find all seasons!
Follow creators
Follow the creator you like and check all their recent updates to discover more interesting content.
Go through your creator followed list like a phone book. No Searching.
Never lose your content
Easily access your saved videos and watch history—revisit your favorites anytime and relive what you loved.
Research
Shorts, full films/shows, and analysis
Mainstream media and social media digital media involve shorts, full films/shows, and analysis videos. There are plenty of opportunities that can enhance current day's recommendation system.
Competitive Analysis
Examining the popular.
By comparing Youtube, Tiktok, and Netflix, I am able to find something that they are lacking a unified way to watch multi-format content at one place.
Ideation
Opportunitiy
With a focus on provoking the active recommendation system through chance, I found inspiration from short view platform as an access point.
Specifically, many users nowadays discover interesting films and shows through shorts scrolling!
Structure
Making each filmic work into a "ROW".
For the basic structure, I want to make each film or show into a row in the app. The user can explore the work from right to left.
To find a different filmic work, simply go to shorts page and scroll to a different row!.
Supporting the creators
Discover through creators too!
Whenever users find interesting shorts or analysis uploaded by creators, they can follow them. This allows users to receive notifications when the creator updates, enabling continuous content discovery. This cycle forms a feedback loop that enhances engagement and discovery.
Iteration
Balancing user and creator experience
The hardest part of the process was removing features to enhance the user experience. Ultimately, I decided to eliminate two fundamental features to preserve the element of surprise and maintain a healthy creator community.
On the other hand, I also added two features to make the information architecture more clear.
Features removed
Filter of genre in short video
Some of my classmates suggested adding genre filters while scrolling, but I feel that this approach limits the element of surprise, making content discovery more predictable rather than exploratory.
Locking analysis before watching the full
In the very beginning, I thought If viewers haven’t watched the movie beforehand, when they watch analysis straightaway, they might lose the surprise factor and emotional impact of key moments.
Yet, this locking feature would harm the views of creators upload, thus harming the health of Wander creator community. Therefore, I removed this feature.
Features added
Old
New
Colored tags
Initially, I only used tags, but the uniform black color made it difficult to differentiate between the three types of videos.
To improve clarity, I introduced color coding, allowing users to instantly recognize the video type at a glance.
Colored theme
After adding colored tags, I thought—why not enhance how each color represents its video type?
So, I implemented a color system: purple for shorts, red for full-length content, and yellow for analysis. This not only helps guide users but also adds a more stylized touch to the navigation bar.
Old
New
Early stage planning
Conclusion
What I learned?
Competitive analysis of popular apps works better than less-used ones. Keep questioning yourself until you are satisfied with result. This is the best self-critique process
If I had more time...
I would develop the prototype for horizontal scroll and a video demo for the Wander walk through
