Peerflix Site Redesign

Challenge: As a newly-formed venture capital effort, Peerflix needed to rework their entire DVD trading application into a more usable and intuitive system. With six weeks available to completely redesign their online trading and points engine, they asked us to help.

  • Usability Testing: We started the redesign by testing potential users on the existing system to discover its key interaction issues, and determine where we should focus our efforts in the short time available for the project.

  • New Member Sign-up: One of the first areas to redesign was the sign-up process, to make it easier and more compelling. We created a wizard system that acted with elements of online gaming for the user. The new sign-up process also incorporated contextual disclosure elements, built into the system using DHTML layers.

  • Personalized Home Page: Another important aspect of the redesign effort was to develop a personalized home page that served up appropriate information for each user depending on their user type: trader, member, or browser/guest.

  • Catalog Details: With the increased functionality of social browsing and the availability of deep, rich information, we crafted the catalog detail page to meet the informational needs of both the casual movie fan as well as the more intense viewer.

Solution

With six weeks available to completely redesign their online trading and points engine, they asked us to help. One of our key project requirements was that we add greater community and more viral aspects to the application. We commenced with usability testing of the existing system to discover its key interaction problems.