AI Film Discovery Application
This project began as a design research initiative at Stanford, driven by a personal fascination with how people experience cinema in everyday life. Through interviews and observation, a consistent tension surfaced. People spoke with genuine enthusiasm about wanting to watch more films, yet repeatedly stalled at the moment of choosing what to watch. What first appeared as shortened attention spans revealed itself as something more human and familiar. An overload of choice, fragmented platforms, and a decision process that felt effortful rather than inviting.
The phone interface shown above illustrates one of the earliest design explorations on the left, followed by a later iteration on the right. These initial concepts emerged from studying how recommendation systems and social signals shape discovery in music and visual platforms. The work reframes content discovery as a design challenge centered on restoring ease, curiosity, and confidence in the act of pressing play. The interface has since evolved further beyond what is shown here.
Research insights were translated into functional prototypes combining social curation, personalized signals, and streamlined navigation to reduce cognitive load while preserving flexibility. Early user testing revealed that familiar interaction patterns increased comfort, while new decision support features meaningfully reduced browsing paralysis. Each iteration refined hierarchy, pacing, and feedback loops to balance delight with clarity.
The image above shows a subsequent stage of development, where the earlier version appears on the right and a later iteration on the left. This progression reflects an ongoing effort to reach an interface that feels both familiar and calming, while quietly guiding users toward confident decisions. The project remains in active development as an exploration into reimagining how people encounter cinema and television in an age of infinite supply, with the broader ambition of designing media experiences that restore intention and emotional connection at the moment of choice.
