Content Discovery in Online Services: A Case Study on a Video on Demand System

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Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

Date

2019-06-17

Department

Major/Subject

Computer Science

Mcode

SCI3042

Degree programme

Master’s Programme in Computer, Communication and Information Sciences

Language

en

Pages

99+6

Series

Abstract

Video-on-demand services have gained popularity in recent years for the large catalogue of content they offer and the ability to watch them at any desired time. Having many options to choose from may be overwhelming for the users and affect negatively the overall experience. The use of recommender systems has been proven to help users discover relevant content faster. However, content discovery is affected not only by the number of choices, but also by the way the content is displayed to the user. Moreover, the development of recommender systems has been commonly focused on increasing their prediction accuracy, rather than the usefulness and user experience. This work takes on a user-centric approach to designing an efficient content discovery experience for its users. The main contribution of this research is a set of guidelines for designing the user interface and recommender system for the aforementioned purpose, formulated based on a user study and existing research. The guidelines were additionally translated into interface designs, which were then evaluated with users. The results showed that users were satisfied with the proposed design and the goal of providing a better content discovery experience was achieved. Moreover, the guidelines were found feasible by the company in which the research was conducted and thus have a high potential to work in a real product. With this research, I aim to highlight the importance of improving the content discovery process both from the perspective of the user interface and a recommender system, and encourage researchers to consider the user experience in those aspects.

Description

Supervisor

Nieminen, Marko

Thesis advisor

Salovaara, Antti
Kanerva, Einari

Keywords

video on demand, TV, recommender system, user experience design, user-centered design

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Citation