Mobile Interface Design for Online Movie Databases – Comparing Active Exploration With Standard UI Designs

We present a comparative study of two touch-based interface designs for exploring online movie databases on tablets: a standard implementation similar to the one used by most commercial streaming services and a new concept, called visual navigation, which visualizes meta data of a movie and links it to related ones. We claim that the latter is more engaging for users and encourages active exploration of the database, especially in situations with vague or unclear search goals. These claims are confirmed by two studies: a controlled experiment in a lab environment as well as an online study where random users downloaded the app and tested it on their private devices.