UX research

What the password crackdown did to viewers

Researching how people actually engage with personalisation, recommendations and shared accounts, at the moment the rules changed underneath them.

Context

A policy change is also a research opportunity

This study explored how Netflix users engage with the platform, focusing on personalisation features, content recommendations and account sharing behaviour. Combining surveys with interviews, I gathered insight into what drives satisfaction and where the experience loses people.

Two things came out of it. Personalisation matters more to satisfaction than people volunteer when you ask them directly, and the password sharing policy moved behaviour, not just billing. Both fed a set of suggested improvements to satisfaction and engagement.

The Netflix mark.
The subject. A platform where the account is shared far beyond the household it was sold to, studied at the moment the company decided to stop allowing that.

The full deck, including the survey instrument, the interview guide and the findings, is available on request.

Role
UX Researcher
Timeline
February to June 2024
Focus
Personalisation, recommendations, account sharing
Methods
Survey plus follow-up interviews
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Google Meet
Next project
Aster UI, an agentic interface component library