INFO-644: Information Architecture & Interaction Design
Reimagining IMDb’s Social Experience
IMDb provides an extensive database of movie and TV show information, but lacks the rich, interactive social experiences that mainstream entertainment followers seek. We conducted user research and iterative design to develop a set of recommendations aimed at enhancing the user experience. Key improvements include introducing a dedicated community hub, new social features, and a restructured information architecture for more intuitive navigation across the platform.
Timeline
2 Months
Team
4 UX Researchers & Designers
Role
User Interviews
Competitive Analysis
Card Sorting
Tree Testing
Low/Mid-Fi Wireframing
Prototyping
Tools
Figma / FigJam
Miro
Optimal Workshop
Background
“I never use IMDb’s social features because I don’t feel a sense of community. There’s no concept of it on there.
— Participant 1
IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, is a leading platform for discovering movies, TV shows, and celebrity information. However, it faces increasing competition from social apps like Letterboxd, which emphasize community-driven experiences with features such as user-curated lists and interactive discussions. These platforms cater to users seeking more than just data—they offer shared spaces for conversations and personal engagement with what’s “hot” in media.
To understand how IMDb could better meet user expectations, we explored how mainstream entertainment followers engage with the platform. Our research focused on identifying their pain points, such as the lack of a sense of community, and uncovering opportunities to enhance their experience.
🔍 What problem are we trying to solve?
Mainstream entertainment followers view entertainment consumption as a highly social activity, using it to connect with others by staying informed about trends and discovering relevant recommendations from relatable sources. However, IMDb falls short in fostering these connections due to its lack of a cohesive social experience, poor personalization, and unintuitive navigation.
🎯 Solution
A comprehensive redesign of the IMDb website to enhance content discovery and social connection by introducing a dedicated community hub, integrating social features across the platform, and creating user-centered information architecture and content organization for streamlined navigation.
Who did we design for?
We focused on mainstream entertainment followers – casual media consumers who engage with IMDb to discover content, find/share opinions, and stay connected with the latest in entertainment.
Anecdotally, we’d heard some chatter about IMDb and similar platforms from these users in our social circles, so we were interested in digging in deeper.
Understanding our users
To understand users’ entertainment habits, their behavior patterns and pain points, we conducted 8 interviews within the target user group.
General habits around entertainment consumption and IMDb use:
01
Entertainment consumption is a highly social activity.
Almost all users said they keep up with entertainment trends because it gives them something to connect and talk about with other people, and they find what’s ‘hot’ from what people they know or follow are saying.
02
Users are in search of relevant recommendations.
Mainstream entertainment followers want to find content that is personally relevant, with most preferring recommendations and reviews from ‘real people’ whose taste aligns with their own—but finding these relatable perspectives can be difficult.
03
Mainstream entertainment followers primarily rely on IMDB for ratings and ‘the facts’.
The two most common use cases were viewing ‘trusted’ rating and reading up on factual information like cast and production. Surprisingly, social features like user-generated reviews and discussions were underutilized, despite this user group’s highly social behavior around entertainment consumption.
Current pain points mainstream entertainment followers face with the platform:
04
Lack of a sense of community.
Users noticed a significant lack of community feeling on IMDb, resulting in minimal or no engagement with its social features. Half of users mentioned they prefer the community-driven experiences of platforms like YouTube and Letterboxd, which offer more engaging discussions and real-time activity updates from fellow entertainment consumers.
05
IMDb doesn't feel personalized.
IMDb doesn’t feel ‘tailored’ to mainstream entertainment followers’ interests: 5 users mentioned that the content surfaced doesn’t seem relevant to their specific needs, and they have a hard time finding reviews that matter to them, i.e. from people they relate to.
06
Interface overwhelms users and feels dated.
The layout and visual appearance of the interface feels cluttered and dated – very ‘website-y’ and not as modern as competitors. Half of users felt the homepage in particular is too overwhelming, and many struggle to find site features like user reviews.
Toward ideation: exploring the design space
To inform the redesign process, we conducted a competitive analysis to evaluate industry standards, identify opportunities for improvement, and ensure alignment with user expectations.
A major takeaway was the concept of a dedicated community hub.
We felt that centralizing social features in one place would enhance discoverability, encourage engagement, and provide the cohesive experience users desired, as opposed to only having these features scattered throughout the platform.
Aligning information architecture with mental models
We began our reimagination of the site by assessing and updating the information architecture, since refining the structure to match user expectations would shape how we organized the content within and integrated new features.
Card sorting
We ran a card sorting exercise using Optimal Workshop to evaluate the site's current structure and ease of navigation. To explore the viability of a dedicated community hub, we included a 'Community' card alongside essential supporting pages, such as 'Your Friends' and 'Top Voices,' which would allow users to connect with others on the platform.
Decisions
01
Merging ‘Friends Activity’ and ‘Your Friends’
02
Streamlining 'Awards & Events'
03
Combining 'Movies' and 'TV'
04
Simplifying Lists
Tree testing
After creating a new site structure to align with user expectations, we had participants complete a tree test to determine ease of finding information in the proposed information architecture. We also aimed to identify any areas where users struggled in order to further refine the new site map.
Decisions
01
Moving 'Showtimes and Tickets'
02
Renaming 'Contributor Zone'
Proposed site map
Highlight
Enhanced social features
Users felt that IMDb lacked a sense of community, lagging behind other platforms like Letterboxd. We proposed a social hub with features like an activity feed to facilitate connection with fellow users.
Highlight
Streamlining submenu options
To avoid overwhelming users, we reduced the quantity of submenu categories by merging entries and proposing to change some as sections within pages.
Highlight
Rewording titles for clarity
We renamed some menu items to make their purpose more clear and align more closely with users’ mental model of the site structure.
Wireframing
With our new site structure developed, we began ideating around user insights to sketch out the content within.
01
Decluttering the homepage and streamlining navigation with a vertical navigation bar
02
Introducing a centralized community hub to foster connections and social discovery of content
03
Creating robust social profiles to dive deeper into friends’ activity
04
Consolidating “What to watch” to match users’ mental mode, with rich filtering options for targeted searching
Low / Mid-Fi Prototype Evaluation
To test our design, we developed a realistic user task flow, based on insights around entertainment consumption behavior patterns gathered during our interviews.
Decisions
01
Include a trending filter to the ‘What to watch’ page to allow users to more easily find ‘hot’ content
Users struggled to find movies that were specifically "trendy" and wanted some way to locate these more directly.
02
Add interaction buttons to friends’ ‘Recent Activity’ feed to enhance user engagement
Users liked being able to see friends’ recent activity, but felt interactivity was lacking.
03
Incorporate tailored recommendations in the ‘What to watch’ page to promote personalized content discovery
Users appreciated the consolidated ‘What to watch’ page, but desired more personalization during the search process.
04
Add personalized section headings on home page to make content feel more tailored
While the new home page felt much less cluttered to users, they wanted to see more tailored content surfaced that met their taste.
Final Design
01
Home page
Vertical navigation bar decreases complexity and streamlines navigation
Community menu section promotes social recommendations and connection
Personalized section headings declutter homepage by prioritizing relevant content
02
What to Watch
"Recommended for you" section surfaces content tailored to user preferences
Trend filtering options enables targeted searching in alignment with this user group's needs
03
Movie Page
"Watched by" tag helps users engage with content their friends find interesting, promoting social discovery and interaction
04
Community Page
Friends reviews enables users to discover content through trusted perspectives
Surfacing popular users provides capabilities to discover new perspectives and grow personal community
05
My Profile
Consolidating personal content under one page provides a clear home for users' IMDb identity while making their contribution and interaction history more accessible and meaningful
06
Your Friends
Robust social profiles aligns with user expectations to position IMDb competitively alongside platforms like Letterboxd, which prioritize social engagement
"Taste Match" score enhances personalized discovery and social engagement by supporting users in finding relevant perspectives
Recent activity with interactivity promote a dynamic and engaging social experience
What’s next?
To evaluate the success of our redesign, usability testing should be conducted with mainstream entertainment followers to assess how well the design supports their needs, enables them to complete key tasks efficiently, and enhances their overall experience on IMDb. Research should focus on the initial goals identified from discovery research:
How well does the design promote social connection and an engaging community-driven experience?
Do users feel that content presented is personalized and tailored to their specific interests?
Can users easily navigate through the site and find the content they are looking for?
This testing should focus on identifying usability issues, gathering qualitative feedback, and measuring key metrics such as task completion rates, error rates, and time on task. Insights from these sessions will guide further refinements and ensure the redesign meets its objectives effectively.
