Streaming App

Role

UX / UI Designer

Industry

Entertainment

Duration

3 weeks

The problem

When you don't know what you want to watch, you scroll. But on most streaming platforms, scrolling doesn't help. The same titles appear across three or four different category rows, so you cover more ground without seeing more options. The longer you scroll, the more familiar everything looks, and the more likely you are to give up.

I set myself the brief after noticing I was doing exactly this. Competitive analysis of Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video confirmed the pattern: repetition of titles across categories is a structural issue, and the platforms that rely most heavily on algorithmic rows tend to make it worse.

The design decisions

A few specific decisions shaped the direction.

Emotion-centred categories replace genre lists on the home screen. Instead of Drama or Thriller, rows like Comfort Zone and Dark and Reflective help users match content to how they are feeling. Genre labels describe what something is. Mood labels help you decide if you want it right now.

Tiles per row are intentionally limited. Rather than endless carousels, each row is capped to give users a manageable set of options to consider before moving on. Reducing visible options makes the decision easier, not harder.

Category-first search puts filters before results. Users narrow down what they want before titles appear, rather than digging through a full catalogue.

The shuffle

The shuffle button resets the home screen entirely. If you are scrolling because you don't know what you want, seeing the same titles again serves no purpose. A full reset gives you a genuinely different set of options.

In a real product this would be algorithm-backed, learning from what you shuffle away from so each reset brings content that is thematically adjacent but actually fresh, rather than just randomised.

Testing

I built a fully interactive prototype in Figma and tested it with a real user. The most useful piece of feedback: the shuffle could easily be triggered by accident, which would be frustrating if you had already found something worth watching.

That led directly to adding an undo function. One tap returns the screen to its previous state. It removes the only real friction point the interaction had.