An analysis and my UX improvement proposal

My team at work organises weekly sharing sessions where we each take turns to share about an external product and how we can improve it based on the given topic. It was my turn to share last week on how to improve the Netflix Kids experience for parents. Thought it would be nice to pen my thoughts down here on Medium as well, so here goes!

Kids, and Parents as a Target Audience

It’s easy to see why Netflix would choose to focus on kids and parents as one of their key audiences.

“About half of Netflix’s 75 million members regularly watch kids’ movies or TV shows, but the potential for long-term profits runs much deeper. If the site is able to win over viewers when they’re young, executives said, they may be able to secure their loyalty for life.” — Washington Post, 2016

Though outdated, this statement likely still holds true till today, especially with the subscriber base nearly tripling since then. Winning over the kids’ loyalty at a young impressionable age reaps retention in the long term, which is key to their subscription model.

Parents are an equally important target audience in this case, since they’re essentially the ones paying for and controlling the access for their kids. Aside from keeping the kids entertained with their constant stream of kids content, Netflix has to keep in mind parental concerns such as security, wellbeing when designing their product experience.

Product Timeline of Netflix (Kids)

Over the past decade, Netflix has come up with a some product improvements that caters to their parental and kids experience. To point out a few key ones:

2011 — “Just for Kids” section

A separate hub of movies and TV shows for under 12s.

(-) Kids could still easily switch to the main adult section with a click of a button.

2013 — Profiles

One account could now hold multiple profiles, and parents could set up a ‘Kids’ profile and restrict content based on maturity settings.

(-) Harder to switch now, but still possible if the kids were savvy enough

2020 — Profile Pins

Ability to set a password lock for each profile

(+) Seems to solve the problem of kids having access to mature content now

A key problem that is apparent Netflix is trying to solve with its feature updates is that of kids being exposed to inappropriate content. For now, that problem seems under control. However, there’re are still other unsolved parental concerns that can be potentially resolved with more product features, which I’ll talk about in the next section.

What Parents Care About

Too much screen time

Parents are a busy bunch — they do not have the luxury of being physically present with their kids 24/7 to monitor their TV usage. At the same time, they definitely do not want their kids to fall into the blackhole of Netflix and mindlessly consume content for hours on end.

“Excessive screen time may inhibit a child’s ability to observe and experience the typical everyday activities they need to engage with in order to learn about the world, leading to a kind of “tunnel vision,” which can be detrimental to overall development.” — Health Matters

Other negative impacts of excessive screen time

• Delayed sleep — due to the blue light emitted from the screen which inhibits melatonin (the sleep hormone)
• Sedentary behaviour
• Eye health
• Cognitive development

Educational Value

The type of content that kids consume is often a concern for parents as well. There are put simply, ‘good’ shows and ‘bad’ shows, where the former provides educational value to the viewer (eg. nature shows, moral value shows), while the latter is purely for entertainment purposes.

Parents might be less willing to let their kid spend a lot of time consuming ‘bad’ shows.

Knowledge of their Kid’s Activities

As mentioned earlier, parents do not have the time to physically monitor their kid’s watch activity 24/7. It’s important for them to know what their kids are up to in their absence, so that they can be aware of the above concerns.

Netflix has a few product solutions to tackle this, such as the ability to track the viewing history of your kid’s profile and a recently launched Kids Activity Report to help parents connect better with kids.

Out of these 4 concerns, I chose to focus on Problem 2: Too much screentime as the key one due to both the lack of product solutions for these as well as the importance weightage among the concerns.

UX Improvement Proposal

Proposed Solution

Allow parents to customise a daily screen time limit for Kids profiles.

1. Profile Page
   Parents are able to have a quick view of how much screen time their kids had today, without having to navigate to the settings to check. This provides convenience and a peace of mind for them in their daily Netflix routine.

2. Entering a Kids Profile
A welcome indicator will appear at the top, stating the watch time limit so that the kids are aware from the beginning. This helps them to plan how to maximise their time within this limited period.

The copy written here is stated in a positive manner — rather than imposing the word “limit” which has a negative connotation, it frames the watch time as a reward/treat instead.

3. While watching a show
When hovering on the screen, an indicator on the left will show the daily screentime countdown left for the Kid profile. I chose to place it as a hover function so that it won’t inhibit the watch experience for the kid and make them feel stressed while watching the show.

4. Time’s up
When the time is up, the screen will automatically display this exit message, with the only button being to ‘Exit Netflix’. Again, the copy tries to frame this in a positive manner, encouraging the kids to spend some quality time with their parents.

Once exiting, the kid will not be able to access their Kid Profile again till the next day, when the limit refreshes.

Footnote

Hope you enjoyed this! If you enjoyed this study or have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to email me at [email protected]