Gaia Original Series Branding Research
I conducted user research for a small team of student designers working to rebrand a Gaia original series.
Role: Research Lead
Challenge:
During a two-week sprint with Gaia, my team rebranded the network’s original series Missing Links and designed a system for promoting the series when its new season launches.
Solution:
Research insights were used to design artwork variations that can be targeted based on an individual’s viewing preferences.
Process
Because Gaia content falls into two main categories, Gaia users tend to also fit into one of two groups:
- User Group A: These users are drawn to Gaia.com become they are most interested in the network’s metaphysical content.
- User Group B: These users are primarily interested in yoga/meditation content, but may find other topics covered in Gaia original programming interesting.
User Observation
I observed people encountering the series page for the first time to see how they went about selecting an episode to watch.
Key takeaways:
Users in Group A wanted more information from the series page before diving in, and relied on keywords in the episode titles to make decisions.
User Interviews
Interview subjects did not have to be Gaia.com subscribers, but they were screened for interest in yoga and/or metaphysical topics.
During interviews, testers were asked about yoga practice, meditation practice, and other key Gaia series topics that interested them.
Card Sort
For the card sort, interview subjects were handed 12 cards with new artwork based on series content and 16 cards with keywords. Testers were asked to sort the piles in the order of what content seemed most interesting to them, with specific instructions to think about the stories that might be behind the images.
User Research Results
The top six series artwork options, based on user interviews and card sorts (artwork created by a fellow student designer).
Overall, the images with series host Gregg Braden that hinted at esoteric content in the background performed really highly, as did the images that brought Eastern religion/philosophy to mind.
For users interested in metaphysical content, the images that seemed to make a connection between spirituality and science also ranked highly, while users who were primarily interested in yoga content ranked nature images higher.
Additional Content Recommendations
Research showed that the majority of Gaia’s primary users enjoy reading about content and are curious about additional information on specific topics. By testing keywords with users, we created copy for Gaia’s articles page to enhance the experience for these users with a goal of also improving SEO.
