Case Study: User Research on Filmmaking Discord Community

In this case study, we have done user research to understand the design process and behavior patterns for the niche Filmmaking where we targeted a discord community named Movies and Filmmaking based on Discord.

Why did we choose Filmmaking 📽️ as our niche?

We watch a lot of movies and decided to research something that we find very interesting. Filmmaking being a core and an integral aspect of any movie, covers a lot of opinions of how filmmaking works and there is so much more to discuss and connect about, in this niche.

Why did we choose the Movies and Filmmaking community on Discord?

• We spent a lot of time searching for the perfect community to target our research and we found this community of Discord via the Disboard website.
• This community is a good fit as there are 18,009 members where on average we found 3,000 members online throughout the day.
• Well! We know the members being online in the community is just not enough to make it interesting but this one is a lot more active and engaging than other filmmaking communities on the internet.
• Discord also realized the same and has tagged this community as a Discord Partner.

Primary Research

Community Architecture

Got to admit, the server is very well structured in terms of managing and user roles.

Administrative Roles

• Admin — King/Owner of the Server. Active but like a ghost, only steps in when time needs him.

• Mod — Moderators are mostly responsible for the community's well-being and ensuring there are no conflicts in different channels.

• Staff — Staff members are the ushers of the community-hosting events and activities. Few of them are also responsible for maintaining decorum in the server.

User Roles

• I personally found the user Roles to be very witty and intelligent. They are based out on the reference of motion picture technology advancements over the period.
• They have a lot of professionals on the server and have Pro Roles for them which can be directly asked for from the Moderators.

Bots and Niche-Specific Features

• No Crust on Pizza — A bot that hides categories of channels through reactions. Also, a way to get notified for a particular channel as well.

• Letterbox — This command searches the Letterbox website for the details of the movie you want. Very cool 😮. Very handy to use when recommending a movie to someone within a hot text streak in the server. and yes we love ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’.

• Spoiler — Texts and images can be marked as spoilers. Mostly used in the #spoiler channel where people discuss movies just after they have been released.

• Pinbot — Pins messages to a particular channel for future reference on command by users. Not very useful as a lot of people use it which leads to a mess in the Pinbot channel ultimately.

• ModMaiL — This mod is used by users when they need to contact moderators for requests or when they want to report some activity on the server.

Events

Filmmaking is a miracle of collaboration — James McAvoy

Events are the paramount attribute of the server. They have a variety of events to engage people with a diversity of interests. Most of the users are from the West, but there is a chunk of very regular and participating users from the other parts of the world as well. Most of the events have a criterion for participants to be on a minimum level on the server to take part. Here are some best events from the community.

1. Drive-in Theatre — Most regular, engaging, and cool event of all. It’s a live broadcast of movies on the #Theatre channel where all the members can join. You are not allowed to enable mic in the live stream but if you want to have a discussion, you have a separate #theatre-text channel.

Fun Fact 🤩 — They streamed Andaz Apna Apna where the majority of the viewers were not Indians, trying to enjoy it with the subtitles and discussing it over chat.

2. Round tables — Podcast-style discussion. Anyone can host a round table in the #voice channels.

3. Movie Roulette — A 10 week-long event where users are randomly paired with one another, each week and recommend films that they think the other would enjoy. Each member then has one week to watch the movie suggested and rate it. Ratings will be averaged out at the end of the 10 weeks. The winner is awarded a special role until the next event winner.

4. Trivia — Movie trivia is a random time event where members gather for trivia regarding movies and prize roles are granted to the winners!

5. Writing Prompt — Every month, there will be a competition for writing a short screenplay within the server. This is an excellent tool to help sharpen users’ writing skills and is a lot of fun for the server to partake in!

6. The Social Dilemma — You guys probably know about this documentary on Netflix. This community hosted an exclusive Q&A with the Director, Co-producer, DP, 3D Modeler! and VFX supervisors of the Social Dilemma team, which is so awesome. Users really loved the session and it was like have a celebrity mentor in-house.

User Interviews

We interviewed 5 users from the community and below are a few relevant insights from each individual followed by a conclusion in the end.

Insights 📎 / Problems 🚧 / Surprises 👀 from Observations and Interviews

1. User engagements largely depend on the events the server is hosting.
2. Users are mostly in the scriptwriting domain of filmmaking and love to join theatre for the movie screening while discussing them on text channels simultaneously.
3. The community is also active and the level-ups are designed in such a way that the users interact more and more on channels to get to a higher level for better status, tag, respect, and privileges.
4. There are several sub-categories in the categorized channels for Movies, Filmmaking, Spoilers, General, and others. The sub-categories are of such a variety that sometimes it’s hard for a few people to identify the relevant channel to talk about a specific topic. For example — #action & #thriller having discussions of the same movie, leading to spam on the server.
5. There are 18K members in the community and engaging events and discussions lead to a lot of spamming in the channels. No one can be blamed here but this is how things are designed for mass audiences supporting platforms where everyone has the right to interact.
6. Few topics tend to get heated and people don’t follow protocols of the community to respect the views of each other. Users use cuss words which ruin the concept of being professional.
7. Admin, Mods, and Staff members give a close look at thrown by the users. They don’t hesitate to mute or block the user from the server.
8. Users generally join the server by casually searching for movie servers on Discord or by referral invite.
9. There are a lot of professionals on the server who review the work by the noobs. People who want feedback post their work in the relevant channel and professionals send the feedback in different channels. There could be a better way to share the feedback.
10. There are no subcategories to the #television channel as there are so many genres and no categories for #webseries.
11. Most of the things discussed here are people who love artistic films and who like to discuss the WHY of the films. This way, the people who want to view only films are fewer. A great way to understand that one may feel disinterested if most of the discussions are not in sync with their ideology of films., a great balance is achieved in the community who are here for movies — watching and discussing filmmaking — learning and studying films.
12. A weekly schedule that aligns with all audiences, can be followed by the discussion around it. Most of the schedule is top-down and not community-driven.
13. Mods are used for recommendations which is very cool but the personal review by the referrer is never present.
14. Learners enjoy how directors and other professionals drop with details but the little details on how to make films that are not present on the internet can be shared as well.
15. Hard to track conversations, due to information being scattered.
16. Business opportunities are not posted in this community. whenever business is involved, spams are a big problem.
17. Cultural shift — If many people are from the west, the east tends to take a backseat and eventually leave the server. How to maintain diversity and inclusion?
18. Movies and filmmaking are a huge secret place to be in. the processes and techniques do not lurk around the public due to the obvious behavior of films — spoilers and techniques are often critiqued when they are inspired or copied — rarely that kind of scrutiny happens in other creative industries.
19. Costly and sophisticated equipment intimidate aspiring filmmakers.

Journey Map/User Persona

Opportunities in the Journey Map

Joining a community

1. Introductions of the channel often provide important information on the community. However, users browse the channel and channel’s content. How to onboard new users with important information in the community?
2. Discoverability of a new community. There are few ways to browse different online community but finding a community to join is a cumbersome process

Interacting with the online community

1. Ability to read the room in order to join the conversation — Often, cultural barriers increase the participation barrier. “A simple scriptwriting by a 16-year-old submission led to sarcasm and mockery may scar the person to pursue film making”
2. Keeping track of the conversations — Since the community is a very large one. Many asynchronous discussions end up being open without a proper end. How to enable asynchronous conversations in an online community?

Learning from the community

1. Apart from the usual conversations, How to enable collective learning amongst the community. There are many people in the community who feel the need to learn, the need to communicate, they need to understand how to get into filmmaking. How to enable sub-communities for greater learning activities through community
2. Pros who can offer to mentor certain people can be overwhelmed when they post that they can offer mentorship services to few as there is no selection process or need not be no selection process. How to connect mentors and mentees in the community?

Possible products on solving existing gaps

1. A personal bookmark bot that works as a DM. To solve for information scattering and to track asynchronous conversations
2. An audio-visual medium or a better way to onboard newly joined community members

Know The Team

Jeevanshu Narang

An actuarial guy who turned Designer, working towards making products with great user experience. Currently part of the 10K Designers. A product designer is someone who has to wear a lot of hats during the course of designing, I’m here with my closet full of hats.

Contribution — Research, Interviews, Content, Figma content creation, Information Architecture of the research, Visuals, Ideation and Problem statements.

Twitter 🐦
Linkedin 👥
Dribbble🏀

Shubhank Pawar

A product Designer with an interest in creating Delightful experiences. Currently part of 10K Designers.

Twitter 🐦
Dribbble 🏀

Tools Used

Special Thanks To

10K Designers Community

Gratitude for such a lovely opportunity. Research is fun with all the learnings we have from the cohort masterclass. Thank you Abhinav Chhikara and special thanks to Sagar Bhardwaj for close mentoring.

Movies and Filmmaking Community

Thank you so much for helping us with the research and being warm and welcoming to the community.