user-interviews.typ

= User Interviews <Chapter::UserInterviews>


== Interview Template

User: \\
Interviewer:

*Do you often share videos with your friends?*

*Have you ever watched videos with your friends?*

*Tell me about the last time you had a watch party.*

*How do you feel about OTT as a platform?*

*How often do you encounter problems with OTT? Specifically, down time, losing room state, or unresponsiveness.*

*Do you use permanent rooms?*

*Would you say that using permanent rooms are more convenient than temporary rooms?*

*If you wanted to watch a video with a friend, but OTT was not available, what would you do?*

*If OTT kept having problems, would you continue to use it?*

#pagebreak()

== Interview: Jay Creamer

User: Jay Creamer (Friend)\\
Interviewer: Carson McManus

*Do you often share videos with your friends?*

Yes, frequently, multiple times per week.

*Have you ever watched videos with your friends?*

Yes.

*Tell me about the last time you had a watch party.*

Last night when we were watching those documentaries on OTT.

*How do you feel about OTT as a platform?*

I like it. It's simple and easy to use. Other platforms are too complicated, and filled with ads.

*How often do you encounter problems with OTT? Specifically, down time, losing room state, or unresponsiveness.*

I haven't used it frequently enough to encounter many problems like that.

*Do you use permanent rooms?*

Yes.

*Would you say that using permanent rooms is more convenient than temporary rooms?*

Yes, it's more convenient to have a dedicated space for my friends and me to gather and watch videos together. But it depends on the situation. If I'm just sharing a video with a random friend, I'll use a temporary room.

*If you wanted to watch a video with a friend, but OTT was not available, what would you do?*

If OTT is down, I would use another service.

*If OTT kept having problems, would you continue to use it?*

It's different because I know you, so I would be more likely to continue using it. But if it was a service I didn't know, I would probably stop using it.

#pagebreak()

== Interview: Daniel Craig

User: Daniel Craig (Friend, Student at Stevens Institute of Technology)\\
Interviewer: Cindy Lee

*Do you often share videos with your friends?*

Somewhat often, depends on the type of content. I don't share long videos often, usually just share short videos.

*Have you ever watched videos with your friends?*

Yes.

*Tell me about the last time you had a watch party.*

Last time we had a watch party was a couple nights ago. Watched an anime, had some popcorn. After each episode, we talked about it and gave our thoughts. The last time I had an online watch party was in a Discord call. We were just watching music videos together through the Discord Youtube activity.

*How do you feel about OTT as a platform?*

I think it's a pretty cool idea as a platform. I can see a clear use case for it. Works better than Discord. Very responsive, well thought out. I think it's good at what it's trying to do.

*How often do you encounter problems with OTT? Specifically, down time, losing room state, or unresponsiveness.*

I haven't encountered any of those problems, or experienced any issues when I was using it.

*Do you use permanent rooms?*

I didn't try to make a permanent room.

*Would you say that using permanent rooms are more convenient than temporary rooms?*

Yes, if you use OTT often. If you use it a few times a week or month, having a permanent room with certain settings would be more convenient. But if you don't use it often a temporary room would be quicker.

*If you wanted to watch a video with a friend, but OTT was not available, what would you do?*

Probably would use Discord voice chat. I'd stream the video on Discord and watch it that way.

*If OTT kept having problems, would you continue to use it?*

No, because other platforms or services that are similar enough exist already like the Discord Youtube activity and screensharing. They don't work as well as OTT, but they work well enough that if there were problems with OTT I would use those instead.

#pagebreak()

== Interview: Elizabeth Foster

User: Elizabeth Foster (Friend, Student at Stevens Institute of Technology) \\
Interviewer: Cindy Lee

*Do you often share videos with your friends?*

A lot, probably send my friends a ton of videos. Like a few times a week.

*Have you ever watched videos with your friends?*

Yes, less often than sharing them though.

*Tell me about the last time you had a watch party.*

Last online party, me and my friends were watching Nintendo Direct on Youtube together. We were all watching separately though and we were messaging each other about it. We didn't have a way to watch all together at the time, Discord was being weird.

*How do you feel about OTT as a platform?*

I think it's really cool, I like that it's easy to input videos and it's useful to have playlists. I don't know many other video sharing websites that have that feature. I like that you can sign in with your Discord account. Like that it supports many video platforms like Youtube, Vimeo. It's a good utility tool.

*How often do you encounter problems with OTT? Specifically, down time, losing room state, or unresponsiveness.*

I haven't used it that much but I didn't face any problems.

*Do you use permanent rooms?*

Yes, seems neat.

*Would you say that using permanent rooms are more convenient than temporary rooms?*

Yes. If you're doing it with a consistent group, everyone is aware of the same link so you don't have to keep sending links. And rules are more consistent so you don't have to adjust the settings every time.

*If you wanted to watch a video with a friend, but OTT was not available, what would you do?*

I would probably use Discord.

*If OTT kept having problems, would you continue to use it?*

If there were consistent problems, probably not. There are a lot of video sharing platforms out there. If the problems were fixed, I'd probably go back.

#pagebreak()

== Interview: Jakob Gibson

User: Jakob Gibson (Friend, Student at Stevens Institute of Technology) \\
Interviewer: Cindy Lee

*Do you often share videos with your friends?*

Yes. Depends, like once a day.

*Have you ever watched videos with your friends?*

Yes.

*Tell me about the last time you had a watch party.*

If we're talking in-person, those happen all the time. If we're talking online, probably on Discord, somebody was streaming what they were watching. It's usually impromptu.

*How do you feel about OTT as a platform?*

I think it's an interesting idea. Having the ability to have synchronized rooms is cool, there are extensions exists for that but they can be kinda janky.

*How often do you encounter problems with OTT? Specifically, down time, losing room state, or unresponsiveness.*

I haven't used it enough. N/A

*Do you use permanent rooms?*

Yes, if there was the same group of people I'd share it with or just need to share a video with a couple of people.

*Would you say that using permanent rooms are more convenient than temporary rooms?*

They're around equally convenient, there's benefits and drawbacks to both.

*If you wanted to watch a video with a friend, but OTT was not available, what would you do?*

Probably just use Discord, or sent them the video and wait for them to respond.

*If OTT kept having problems, would you continue to use it?*

Probably not, if there were constant issues I probably wouldn't use it.

#pagebreak()

== Interview: Michael Smith

User: Michael Smith (Friend)\\
Interviewer: Cindy Lee

*Do you often share videos with your friends?*

Yes, I do. Very much, all the time.

*Have you ever watched videos with your friends?*

Yes.

*Tell me about the last time you had a watch party.*

I was in Discord voice channel, I streamed a funny ROBLOX video and then they showed me an Overwatch video.

*How do you feel about OTT as a platform?*

Honestly, it looks pretty fine. Only thing I would say is that instead of adding videos on the bottom, it would be nice if it was on the side instead so you wouldn't have to stop watching the video to scroll down.

*How often do you encounter problems with OTT? Specifically, down time, losing room state, or unresponsiveness.*

None.

*Do you use permanent rooms?*

Yeah.

*Would you say that using permanent rooms are more convenient than temporary rooms?*

Yeah, long term it would be way more convenient.

*If you wanted to watch a video with a friend, but OTT was not available, what would you do?*

I would proceed to stream on Discord.

*If OTT kept having problems, would you continue to use it?*

I would bookmark it, and come back eventually to see if it was fixed. I'd come back and check again 3 times and if it wasn't fixed by then I would probably drop it.

== Conclusions from Interviews

- Users are likely to permanently switch to a different platform if OTT is down for too long or too frequently.
- Users are more likely to use permanent rooms if they use OTT long term.