Social Media TV Behavior

Background

I was tasked with investigating the growing intersection of social media and TV programming. Specifically, we wanted to understand people’s behaviors in this space in order to better advise clients on how to design products and services within the social TV domain.

Process

In-home contextual research was conducted with 30 respondents. During this research, I went over the respondents’ general social media usage, television viewing behaviors, favorite programs, what sort of programs they would engage socially with and how, etc. When possible, I also observed individuals while they watched TV and made note of social media usage.

Results

From the research, several trends became clear. There wasn’t a concrete definition of what sort of program people would post about / engage with, but there were trends. People were less likely to post about “guilty pleasure” shows such as The Jersey Shore or 16 and Pregnant. Shows that people were more likely to post about often had a significant element of mystery (e.x. Lost, The Following, Twin Peaks, etc.).

Clear user types emerged based on people’s social media / TV behaviors. These clusters tended to be based on three variables:  enthusiasm for TV, social media usage, and affinity for technology. Form this, my team and I were able to build a robust set of social TV personas.