Timeline: March 2020 - June 2020
Project: User experience evaluation
My Role: UX research, online experiment development and implementation, interviewing, results analysis and report writing
Understanding how text and video chat affect the relatedness of people in long-distance relationships while watching a movie with Netflix Party.
More and more people travel across the world and live remote lives, leading to long-distance relationships between family members, friends and romantic partners. Because people are living increasingly apart, they keep looking for ways to maintain strong relationships. This is important for humans because they have an innate need to belong: a need for relatedness. With the current fast-paced technological developments, online communication tools have the possibility of supporting people’s need to feel related to each other and keep strong emotional bonds. These tools have become even more important in 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Text vs. video chatting
Common ways for people to communicate while apart are text messages and video calls. There is a clear difference between these two types of communication medium, however there is a need to understand how these two mediums differ in satisfying the need for relatedness, while using Netflix Party.
Video chatting
Allows for sharing visual information in real-time. This synchronicity makes people in long-distance relationships feel closer, due to a greater sense of presence. Interactions are thus more personal and meaningful since people can better understand each other’s emotions.
Text chatting
Allows for quick information sharing, however because they are asynchronous and lack non-verbal communication, they can lead to misunderstandings.
Methodology
Online experiment
Nine pairs of partners/friends watched an interactive movie* together, half of them used Netflix Party's text feature to stay in touch while the other half used a video calling device.
*The interactive nature of the movie forced the participants to interact with each other and consequently use the communication medium.
Interviews
After watching the movie, the pairs of participants were interviewed together.
Themes discussed included:
| Current methods/tools used to maintain relatedness
| The impact of watching a movie together remotely
| The influence of the communication medium on the relatedness felt
Pre-post relatedness questionnaires
A questionnaire was implemented before and after the experiment, to evaluate the changes in the level of relatedness as a consequence of the communication medium used. This questionnaire consisted of two validated scales:
| The Unidimensional Relationship Closeness Scale (URCS)
| The Inclusion of Other in Self Scale (IOS)
Insights
From the Relatedness Questionnaires it was possible to see that all participants felt more related after watching the movie. However, no difference was found between video and text chatting.
Relatedness experiences
| Communicating through video leads to more emotional experiences
| Participants preferred using Netflix Party with video chat rather than text chat
| All participants thought Netflix party would add value to their long-distance relationship
Medium preference
| There was a clear preference for video chatting as a communication medium, since it was perceived as more personal and faster
| There was however some concerns with the logistics of watching a movie and video chatting at the same time
Presence experiences
| Netflix Party combined with video chatting led to a higher sense of presence because participants could see each other’s reactions, emotions and voices in real time
| Using Netflix Party with video chatting was perceived as being the same as doing it together in the same place
Pain points
| Participants had technical issues with the interactive movie and Netflix Party. In some cases the movie froze and in others they went different directions with the interactive choices.
“The meaning of watching a movie with another person is also to see their reactions. I like to see her reactions and emotions while watching the movie”
— Participant v3
Recommendations
Video chat feature
Currently Netflix Party has a text feature, but participants preferred to interact with a video chat, thus it could be interesting for Netflix to investigate how it could incorporate a stable video chatting feature in its platform
Interactive movie technical issues
There were reoccurring technical issues with the interactive movie and Netflix Party, thus it is recommended that Netflix investigates how a smoother experience could be provided with an interactive movie
Take-away
Why did participants prefer to communicate with video calls?
The more the naturalistic the communication medium is, the less the cognitive effort is required from individuals. The naturalness of the medium depends on the ability to see and listen to each other, quickly exchange information, observe body language and facial expression. This means that video communication that resembles a face-to-face conversation requires less cognitive effort than text communication. This might explain why the participants preferred to interact with the video chat rather than the text chat.