1 Usability Comparison of IMDb.com and RottenTomatoes.com Janae Francese, Evelyn Johnson, Jacob Morrison, Aaron Sklar Overview This project is about comparing how users interact with two different, yet similar, websites. Both IMDb.com and RottenTomatoes.com are movie databases and search tools, but we want to see how users complete the same prompt on those websites. Our questions are based on the usability testing tools developed by Steve Krug, and presented on his site Rocket Surgery Made Easy. During our usability test, we will ask users to find a title through an actor, then find show times for that film nearby. Background IMDb, or internet movie database, is an online database with information about television, movies, and film events, as well as many of the people involved in creating those projects. IMDb also provides statistics about the movies, hosts for message boards for each movie, and polls on questions about films and television shows. The site was started in 1990 and sold to Amazon.com in 98, has over 3 million titles, including television shows, films, and more, as well as over 6 million personalities which include actors, and the characters that they play. There are 56 million registered users that can contribute material. Rotten Tomatoes is a website that was created in 1998 specifically committed to informing users about films and their reviews from multiple critics. It was sold to Flixster in 2010, and thus acquired in 2011 by Warner Bros. The website is best known for giving critical film reviews. Rotten Tomatoes has over 25 million users with its popularity continuing to grow. This website accumulates reviews from certified film critics and displays the percentage of positive reviews for every film next to a Rotten or Certified Fresh scale icon. There are also other functions to this website such as buying tickets and simply learning more about a film of your choice.
2 Case Study of IMDb.com IMDb Usability Test The user for the IMDb usability study is a 21 year-old male college student. He spends a significant amount of time online, mostly watching movies on Netflix or YouTube. He has heard of and used IMDb.com but only really utilizes the search function not the extra articles or blogs available. So, we asked him to not use the search function, and instead solve the problem another way. PROCESS We asked our user to find Shia La Beouf s latest movie without using the search bar, and then buy tickets for it. The user happened to know La Beouf s latest movie is Fury, but found the actor s page to double-check. 1) Find current movies. On the right side, there is a Box Office section with the top 5 movies out now. 2) Clicked on Fury because Shia LaBeouf is in it. Fury s top actors include LaBeouf, so click on his name.
3 3) Go to LaBeouf s profile page. Fury is the only LaBeouf film released this year. 4) Go back to Fury page Notice an unobtrusive link to showtimes and tickets 5) Click on Get Showtimes and Tickets Directly linked to a page with 4 theatres within 5 miles of my location
4 6) The Theatres have showtimes listed under their names. Showtimes are clickable and are links to ticket prices through Fandango. CONCLUSION The IMDb website is a great film network and tool. The person I surveyed has used it in the past, but really just focused on the search function of the website. When he was describing the home page, he almost forgot to mention the quick links side bar. Because of my prompt to find the movie without using the search function, he happened to use the side bar to find a movie instead of using search. This is a very smoothly run website. I think the search function is also helpful (even though not used in this exercise), because it still returns similar-sounding search results even if a name or title is not spelled correctly. If you re looking for a trailer of the movie, videos are prominent without scrolling, and if you re looking for tickets to a showing, links are obvious and yet unobtrusive to other activities.
5 Case Study of RottenTomatoes.com Rotten Tomatoes Usability Test The user for the RottenTomatoes usability study is a 19 year-old male college student. He also spends his time watching videos, but he also does research for his classes online. He has never heard of nor used RottenTomatoes.com, so he had more clicks involved in his search. PROCESS We asked our user to find Shia La Beouf s latest movie without using the search bar, and then buy tickets for it. He also happened to know it was Fury, but chose to follow the prompt through La Beouf. 1) Using the search bar, spelled out Shia LaBeouf latest mov No results were found, and no suggestions made. 2) Then tried using the option Opening this week under the Movies tab. He couldn t remember when Fury came out, but knew it was recently.
6 3) Again, didn t find what he was looking for, or expected to find. Tried to see if Shia La Beouf came up when scrolling over movie titles. 4) Used the search bar to find Shia La Beouf Clicked on the drop-down option from the search bar to the actor s page. 5) Fury was an image on the right side of La Beouf s page, so was clicked. Image linked to a trailer 7) Image linked to trailer, which automatically began playing There was no link to the film s page, showtimes, or movie tickets.
7 8) Searched for Fury in the search bar. Fury (2014) movie page was found. 9) Directly under the movie poster is a 3-D blue button for Tickets & Showtimes Under tabs for dates, showtimes are in the same clickable 3-D blue button format CONCLUSION Rotten Tomatoes is a strong resource for finding movie ratings and watching trailers. On the home page, there are easily visible categories, such as Movies Opening This Week and Top Box Office, with their respective percentage ranking to the left. However, the red tomato or green splash imagery alongside that percentage ranking is not very informative to the first-time user. The search function is prominently positioned at the top, and provides drop-down suggestions as you type. But, it is really weak, because even though Shia LaBeouf was in the initial search (step 1 above), the search didn t provide any results. This could be frustrating and cause the user to doubt the website. Also, when watching trailers, there is no immediate link to the movie page. Again, a user would have to go to the search bar to search for the movie title (and hopefully spell it correctly).
Design Recommendations IMDb.com appears cluttered to the inexperienced user. We would suggest downsizing the home page, but still providing helpful images and lists as links. The search function on IMDb is much better than Rotten Tomatoes because no matter what is typed into the search, there are relevant results. IMDb s trailer page is nice because it still provides links to the movie s unique page. Rotten Tomatoes does not have an easy link from trailer to movie page. Rotten Tomatoes has a very visual ranking system, they have an image (green splash, ripe tomato, and certified fresh tomato) next to the percentage of positive rankings (rankings drawn from multiple sources). IMDb has a simple 10 star system, to which users can input their ranking of the movie. Sketch recommendation for IMDb.com: 8 We would recommend that the home page of IMDB be a significantly less cluttered. It can still have the upcoming movie ads on the home page and a link to movies and tickets. However, we think IMDb should consider removing some of the other information from the homepage and placing the links under tabs at the top. Sections such as: the latest photo galleries, the news desk, TV recaps, etc. This way the user doesn't feel so overwhelmed when he or she first goes on the site. We would also like to see IMDb add a critic s ratings and reviews section (like Rotten Tomatoes has) under the movie s title page. This way you can get the ratings that the users have given as well as critical ratings. Sketch recommendation for RottenTomatoes.com: We had two major issues with Rotten Tomatoes: if the search function didn t have an exact match, it wouldn t return any results, and also there was no link from the trailers page to the movie s page. Within the search function, returning partial matches would be very helpful to first-time users. On the right, we solved the page link issue by simply adding a link to view the film s page.
Conclusions Both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb are well-designed websites. They hold similar information, but are better suited for different ways of displaying and accessing that information. The IMDb site is extremely easy to get around, even without using the search button. Finding information about the newest releases on the site was a breeze using its "Box Office" side menu. It quickly displayed relevant information about the movie we were looking for such as buying tickets, run time, and actors involved, but didn t prominently display outside sources for reviews for the movie. Rotten Tomatoes however, is made to help the user find a movie based on its reviews. While it isn t as easy to find actors or characters, it is extremely useful in giving relevant reviews that the user can take into account when deciding whether or not to see the movie. It also prominently displays a button that will take the user to nearby theaters and their showtimes so s/he can buy tickets. Overall it seems that IMDb has more information and is easier to navigate, but Rotten Tomatoes has more in depth reviews, and both are helpful with buying tickets. 9 Image Credits Screenshots of IMDB.com and RottenTomatoes.com on pages 1-7 Design recommendation for IMDB.com by Janae Francese Design recommendation for RottenTomatoes.com by Jacob Morrison