Hulu Browser Redesign

Hulu is a subscription video service that features television series, movies, and their own original content. They feature content from networks including ABC, Fox, and PBS and also stream movies from labels such as Lionsgate.

During the early Summer of 2020, Jimmy Denney, VP of Product Management and Jason Wong, Director of Product Management, released a statement regarding their most recent redesign of Hulu in May and addressed the issues they considered in this update to improve the user’s experience.

They identified that creating the best experience for their users include:

They implemented these goals by:

The brief included that the interface also served to create a consistent experience across Disney streaming products, since Disney acquired full control over Hulu in 2019.

While these changes certainly improved aspects of the experience for a Hulu user, as a personal user myself, I felt that there existed opportunities to improve the browser interface further. I wanted to focus this project around the goals the project management team identified and challenge myself to make meaningful improvements that support them.

How can we redesign the existing interface to meet the expectations of the modern day streamer using the focuses identified by the Hulu team?

According to a study conducted by Julia Stoll, within the surveyors age groups, ages 18-29 had the highest percentage of users (41%) who currently have a Hulu subscription. With this in mind, I conducted research with individuals around this age and searched for relatively avid streamer users.

I created a google survey that included a screen record of the current home page of Hulu and asked questions regarding their investment in Hulu and what their thoughts are regarding the interface’s current state and potential changes that could reach unmet desires.

During the affinity mapping process, I identified three main groupings that the data belonged to: engagement, discovering, and interface.

More importantly, I recognized that these categories and the ideas within them interconnect with each other. Therefore, targeting all three components in this redesign was essential to contribute meaningful and effective changes to the interface.

Most participants seem to use Hulu to watch specific shows, but have a hard time navigating through the interface. As a result, it is harder to find the shows they are interested in and discover new ones.

In my research, I discovered that users often brought up other existing services like Netflix while explaining what they believed was lacking in Hulu in terms of interface and their experience. Because Hulu is not the only streaming platform people use, it was important to consider what features of competitor’s services are valuable to users because it impacts their expectations when they come across similar services.

There were two main features underdeveloped in Hulu: previews for shows/show’s information and filters. While these properties somewhat exist on the interface, they require a lot of “finding” on the user’s end with having to click through buttons in order to view information. This “work” makes the process of discovering new content bothersome. Likewise, the search feature, genre feature, and “more information” on shows required users to enter a process that was not as easy to exit out versus services that include preview features (like hovering for more information). This was important to consider as well since part of the expectation that comes with a user determining what show to watch is that the service will allow them to assess the available content in an efficient manner.

This project was interesting to me because of how strong the correlation was between expectations formed from other streaming services (like Netflix) and complaints/difficulties found with Hulu - acknowledging what features were outdated in context to competitors turned out to be a beneficial strategy for finding solutions to similar problems that others may have already solved. I also learned that when dealing with interfaces that have many buttons and processes, having actions like hovering for a preview, are incredibly efficient solutions.

Overall, I enjoyed working on this redesign! Over the course of months I have seen small changes roll out on the actual Hulu interface and I’m curious to see if any of the solutions I proposed are also thought of in the future.