Nickelodeon App

Ask

Identify small improvements we could make, on a tight deadline, within the Nick app to support a drastic increase of content across multiple shows.

Context & Process

The Nick App - Nickelodeon’s cross-platform app for video and games, targeted at kids aged 7 to 12 - had been live for a number of years and was looking to grow it’s KPIs related to visitors and content impressions. Our number one complaint from kids was that there wasn’t enough content for them to watch.

Viacom decided to resolve this by adding over 1,000 additional hours of episodic content. However, the app was not set up in a way where it could support this content - users had also stated that it was difficult to browse and sort content in the grid-based system we used at the time. Given that this initiative was going live in 6 weeks, we needed to identify areas where low-cost improvements could produce a high-impact results.

Because this initiative was cross-platform (across Android, iOS, and web), I collaborated with the design leads of the other two platforms to conduct research and stakeholder interviews to identify the top priorities for this initiative. We relied on our analytics team for insights and reviewed users’ past behaviour as an indication of future behaviour as we worked through our proposed solutions. We saw that, with existing users, 46% of full episode clicks came from the “Property Space” (our show-based spaces) on Android, 46% on web, and 52% on iOS. The next-highest area in the app that users launched full episodes from was the related-shows section on the video player screen - 27% on Android, 17% on web, and 23% on iOS. This told us these two areas of the app would benefit the most from improvements.

Results

Our recommended improvements were incorporated into the apps and website and went live December 2017. Within 1 month of launch, visits had increased by 8%, from 15.2MM to 16.3MM. Content impressions for video stream had increased 16%, from 57.2MM, to 66.5MM - with full episode starts specifically rising 8% (13.1MM to 14.2MM.)

Responsibilities

UX architecture, UI, and animation design for the Property Space improvements across all platforms. Worked in an agile environment in collaboration with PMO, Product, and Engineering to implement both improvements.