digital

3 Ways Netflix Could Personalize Viewer Experience

July 19, 2019 Happenings Movies

Tech publisher TechCrunch reported yesterday that the world’s largest video streaming service Netflix (NLFX) has posted a loss of net subscriber base in the U.S. fixing the blame on hikes in subscription costs. Netflix’s loss of U.S. subscribers happened for the first time in eight years and it also missed its targets for overseas customers. Shares of Netflix tumbled more than 13% in after-market hours on July 18.

Netflix

Netflix’s continued subscription price hikes might finally have reached the end of some customers’ patience in the U.S., judging from an overall paid subscriber decline the company reported in its quarterly earnings for its fiscal second quarter 2019 results. The company’s overall growth for paid subscribers climbed by 2.7 million worldwide, but it actually added 2.83 million new subscribers around the world — while losing around 130,000 net in the U.S. to account for the difference.*

* Netflix reports first net subscriber loss in the US, misses global subscriber growth predictions

Last year I wrote a piece on the creative freedom currently afforded by several streaming platforms such as Netflix’s. And the plethora of critically acclaimed movies and TV series, including Oscar winners, that audiences are served on demand some of which otherwise wouldn’t have seen the light of the day being ruthlessly entangled in financial disputes, creative controversies, or sheared mercilessly under the garb of censorship laws across the globe. That creative freedom allows viewers to watch immersive content in high-definition at a nominal rate while bestowing acclaimed filmmakers like Martin Scorcese, Alfonso Querón or David Fincher a safer platform to pursue their innovative endeavours without having to think about compromising their intellectuality, least of all getting jammed in the filmmaking process due to stringent production cost controls. As always I will attempt to look at the subscriber slump from a customer’s viewpoint to analyze if the dots could be connected in innovating the viewer’s experience.

To simplify the challenge in clear terms, how might we innovate the viewing experience to keep the audiences engaged? The launch of Apple TV+ has just made the online video streaming service industry that much more interesting, it joins a bevvy of other subscription services offering loads of original content. So what could Netflix do in order to retain or enhance its customer base regardless of this slump they are facing? I have 3 creative solutions.

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The Freedom For Cinematic Creativity

July 21, 2018 Movies

Netflix - Cinematic CreativityI’d define ‘cinematic creativity’ as the vision for storytelling scripted by the filmmakers in context with the purposes of delivering content of entertainment value or the likes. In that sense, there are multiple reasons why movies in India, one of the largest movie industries in the world, do not get released in the cinemas, while most of them get heavily censored — meaning the so-called offensive scenes and dialogues are sliced by the CBFC and the original content is pruned to make it more viewer-friendly, so to speak. In short, what you eventually see on the big screen is not what the makers intended to showcase for the public. At times, the trailers depict one thing while the final cut of the movie does not have the scenes or the dialogues from the trailer which is disappointing! Luckily, nothing of that sort happened with ‘Sacred Games’ thanks to a platform like Netflix. Clearly, the likes of Netflix are not just an instance of a digital platform for streaming of original content, it’s an ecosystem for cinematic creativity and storytelling for filmmakers of any scale. It’s quite practical, that an underworld epic like the ‘Sacred Games’ would have been completely stripped off of its originality had it been released in the theatres in India, that lesson was bearing heavily on my mind as I was awed by the profanities in the script, albeit, it never seemed unwarranted or thrust upon us merely for its darker content. This is also an opportunity for a deserving sequel to a fully Indian-made series, what the magnificent Powder couldn’t achieve. Then again, unlike some other movies, there are those with a good content value which could never release in India for lack of a distributor which got a voice on this platform. ‘Sacred Games’ was brilliant, but I’d also say, “Viva, Netflix!”

Privacy by Design Framework - Image

Privacy by Design Principles – An Overview

January 25, 2018 Technology
regulations on how organizations process and store user data have become critical in protecting citizens’ rights to online privacy. in which, the foundational principles of privacy by design are a reference point for designing secure systems & business practices.

The importance of ‘privacy’ has immeasurable ramifications for users of today’s digital age. As tech innovation leads us into 2018, and as we wait in anticipation of self-driven cars, autonomous planes, or intelligent bots using AI and machine learning, the Internet has also awakened to the significance and the criticality of safeguarding personal data, in other words protecting users’ privacy online. For instance, in 2017 there were 1,202 breaches in the 11 months alone, according to a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. That’s up by 10 percent from the 1,093 breaches recorded during the entirety of 2016. It’s becoming more important for UX consultants and Product Designers to be aware of the ‘Privacy by Design’ (PbD) principles as an essential part of their UCD strategy which is entirely the aim of this article.

These alarming figures of online privacy breaches should drive our collective conscience at influencing authorities to enforce stricter regulations in developing digital data protection standards and making the entire system and practice of data collection safer and transparent, at the same time educating citizens on the practices of safe collection and storage of personally identifiable information and endowing user privacy its due importance because the next data breach could just be an accident that’s waiting to happen. In that regards, measures have been adopted by the European Union (EU) which promulgated a law seeking to protect the collection and export of personally identifiable data thereby giving individuals complete control over data privacy. It’s called the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR which will be enforced by countries across the EU beginning 25 May 2018 although we need to look closely at the foundational principles of PbD.

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Groopy - Mobile App

Groopy – Designing a Community Mobile Experience

October 8, 2017 Design General
A detailed piece on how I designed Groopy in redefining a community experience

When the launch of the Business Edge Alumni Network was proposed I became involved in designing the brand identity for the group beginning with my research on the diverse community. This network is a place for industry professionals to leverage their collective aspirations and experience in advancing career growth within Canada. The network today is coexisting through the WhatsApp platform which entails several privacy issues. I believed, this privacy concern needed to be addressed, where the need to give personal information to make connections online could be prevented while the data could live on the encrypted servers. Most importantly, my goal was to integrate a community professionally moving away from the core definition of ‘social networking’. The overall focus of this inspired me to conceptualize a mobile app which I named ‘Groopy’.

Background

Social media has built a phenomenal character for users in a ‘social networking’ environment and allowing them easy transaction of personal data such as text, images, video, and opinions in general. My first concept banked upon connecting people outside of the typical ‘social networking’ definition, a professional network that is nurtured in exchanging views but those which are not meant to be ‘shared’ outside the realm of the network due to its structure of belonging only within the current stream of thought. Thus the goal of Groopy is to connect groups of people on an enterprise platform as illustrated below, and it’s an antithesis of a social network.

Social Media vs Groopy Platform

An overview of how Groopy differs from conventional Social Media.

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A Report from TECHSPO Toronto 2017

May 20, 2017 General Technology

I was at the TECHSPO 2017 Toronto yesterday at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre Hotel, having registered back in December 2016 this was an event highly recommended by an acquaintance to find out the local technology landscape.

I was anticipating a high-energy congregation of tech enthusiasts with several booths as is expected of large trade shows and expos, however, I was left disappointed at the thin crowd and fewer tech companies being represented at today’s event, while I guess my timing went awry because most of the exhibitors were at lunch break! Moreover, I’m glad I attended because there was a lot to discover about digital marketing and VR/AR from the companies (out of 13 that were represented) I was able to interact.

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