Designing a Video Co-Watching Web App to Support Interpersonal Relationship Maintenance

Spending time together and enjoying everyday activities helps to support interpersonal relationships, which have many positive benefits for individuals. However, many of these activities are difficult, if not impossible, to participate in when the relationship is long-distance. This work aims to address that problem with one such activity: watching videos together (or video co-watching). In this extended abstract we describe the user-centered design process we used to design our video co-watching web app. Specifically, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 individuals who watch videos with others to understand their current video watching activities. We analyzed those findings using affinity diagramming to identify user requirements and features. After sketching multiple wireframes and getting feedback, we developed an interactive prototype.