The current landscape is dominated primarily by Letterboxd, and IMDB. While successful in their concept, these platforms function mainly as social media-inspired public forums and lack almost all intimacy and genuine conversation, instead becoming more of an X(Twitter) meets movie critique platform.

Through research and a series of initial interviews, I was able to conclude that especially with the current move away from social media sites, a large number of individuals are greatly unsatisfied with these existing platforms for film discussion and analytics. While this idea fills a necessary niche of those looking for exactly this approach, many including myself feel it misses the point by making everything too public and therefore suffering from the same issues as social media. Determining this, there is a necessary unfilled niche of a platform that could directly curate your film preferences and rankings as well as allow for more interesting and intimate conversation, similar to that of which a small group of friends would have.

The original concept of Optics was was basic and existed only as an Excel spreadsheet. While this worked for my small group of friends, as ideas often tend to do, we began expanding its scope quickly on what this spreadsheet could reflect about our film preferences.

This eventually started to reveal the limitations of the spreadsheet format. Feeling it also lacked any real visual charm I thought to evolve the spreadsheet concept visually (while keeping a similar practical feeling that the it had) as well as incorporate more complex features we were not able to in its current state.

Inspired by the function-focused feeling of the original spreadsheet, I decided to innovate on the grid style keeping some similar visual ideas, but bringing in a brutalist/minimalistic style that gave it a more modern feeling.

A stronger use of hierarchy was then implemented to bring stronger focus to more important information and ensure the best user experience while using the app. Enhanced further by consistent grouping and spacing, with increments of 12px to keep the information clear, manageable, and easy to digest.

The design of Optics focuses on maintaining a simple user flow while offering an expansive range of secondary features. Its structure preserves the clarity of the information as it heavily relies on large amounts of text and needed to be presented carefully.

Adding a film is simple: — Tap to add a film, type the film’s name, and select the film you’re looking for. From there you have multiple ways to leave you thoughts, including a quick add, and the ability to add a film without rating it first. This allows you to control the way you create your list, and use the app the way that works best for your watching preferences.

By accessing your profile, you can track your personal film stats, favourite films, and manage your groups. It also provides you and your friends with a general overview of your taste and recent film activities.

From here you’ll see your favourite films you’ve logged, as well as other stats determined by your ratings such as your favourite director, genre, total time watching films as well as how many films you’ve watched in your groups list among other specific to you information.

As an additional piece to Optics, separate from the app’s core functions, there are a few expanded features Optics allows you have. These namely are: Advanced filtering of your list by specific sub-genres and the ability let Optics randomly select a film based on custom filters.

By being optional, these features add a layer of fun and variety that compliments the rest of the app. Using your personal inputs to create a tailored experience for each user without taking away anything from the core experience of Optics.

Optics is a simple concept based around the steadily declining interest amongst younger people (Gen Alpha - Gen Z) in social media platforms but a higher than ever interest in opinion based critiquing and love of film. This project works to create a web app that allows you and your close group of friends to rate and compare your thoughts with more meaningful analytics reflective of you and your groups personal reviews and ratings.