IMDb Interests

Overview

Role: Creator, UX lead, ecosystem designer
Timeline: 2023–present (ongoing)
Team: 10+ teams, 40+ collaborators across UX, PM, Engineering, Research, Marketing, Editorial
Platforms: iOS, Android, Web (responsive)

IMDb Interests is the discovery and identity system I created from scratch. From writing the PR/FAQ through designing the ecosystem, selecting the initial 190 interests, writing their definitions, and driving implementation across mobile apps and web. Today, Interests has grown to 280+ pages spanning genres, subgenres, languages, and franchises, reaching 14.4% of IMDb's monthly active users and driving 1.7MM title page visits per month. It's now the foundation for IMDb's personalization engine, community features, and notification strategy.

The Problem

People evaluate what to watch based on two things: quality (ratings, reviews) and relevance (does this match my taste, my mood, who I'm with). IMDb had strong quality signals, but almost no way for customers to express, identify, or explore their specific taste.

The data confirmed this:

• In research, customers said they'd use the apps more with better content relevancy, more personalization, and community features

• 97% of Fire TV app customers said "view movies/series in your preferred genres on the home screen" would be helpful

• Younger fans specifically wanted to connect with others who share their interests

• IMDb only attributed broad genres (Drama, Comedy, Horror) to titles. Customers needed more specificity. They couldn't articulate their taste because the vocabulary didn't exist

The missing piece: an explicit signal for customers to tell us what they like and a means for like-minded fans to find one another.

The Vision

I proposed Interests as more than a browse feature. It was a bet on three things:

1. Discovery: help fans find more of what they love through specific, meaningful categories

2. Identity: give fans a vocabulary to describe their taste ("I'm a Psychological Thriller person")

3. Community: create the connective tissue for fans to find each other

Rather than limiting to genres and subgenres, I recommended the flexible term "interests" — and fought for it. The initial instinct from stakeholders was to name this feature after what it launched with: "Genres" or "Subgenres." But I pushed back. Subgenres were only the beginning. I could see the power of this concept would be in expansion: franchises, companies, languages, literary adaptations, moods, eras, events, and categories we hadn't imagined yet. A name like "Genres" would box us in on day one. "Interests" could hold all of it — because the word describes a relationship between a person and a thing they care about, not a content classification system.

The pushback was understandable. "Interests" is vague. "Genres" is concrete and immediately understood. But I argued that the customer's relationship with these pages would evolve beyond browsing subgenres. They'd follow franchises. They'd discover what languages of cinema they loved. They'd connect with other fans who shared their interests. The name needed to grow with the product, not constrain it.

Two and a half years later, the same system that launched with 195 subgenres now holds 280+ interests spanning genres, languages, and franchises — with literary adaptations, eras, moods, and studios on the roadmap. The name held. The ontology scaled. And customers use the word naturally: "These are my interests." That was the goal.

The word "interests" works because it serves three contexts simultaneously:

• Identity: "My interests" — a personal expression of taste on your profile

• Taxonomy: "Interests related to this title" — a classification system on title pages

• Community: "Our shared interests" — the connective tissue between fans

One word spanning discovery, personalization, and community. No other name could have done that. "Genres" is a taxonomy term. "Topics" is too related to discussions. "Fandoms" is too narrow. "Interests" is the only word that belongs to the person, the content, and the community equally.

I presented this vision with working prototypes, provided verbiage and mocks for the 2023 Apps Strategy document, and aligned stakeholders on the long-term potential.

The Process

Defining the taxonomy

I partnered with the genre working group and subject matter experts to identify our initial set of interests. We needed categories that were:

• Specific enough to be meaningful (not just "Thriller" — but "Psychological Thriller," "Conspiracy Thriller," "Spy")

• Broad enough to have sufficient title coverage (50+ titles per interest)

• Recognizable to fans (would they self-identify with this term?)

We landed on 195 interests for launch: 28 genres, 143 TV subgenres, and 207 film subgenres spanning Action, Comedy, Horror, Drama, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Documentary, and more.

Research validation

I partnered with research to test our naming and categorization with customers. We validated that:

• Customers understood the subgenre distinctions

• The names resonated with how fans already described their taste

• The visual presentation (hero images, definitions) helped customers identify with interests they hadn't previously had words for

Designing the ecosystem

Interests wasn't one page or feature. It was an ecosystem of touch points.

• Interest Pages: dedicated hubs with popular/top-rated titles, trailers, news

• Title Page Integration: interest tags in the header of every title, linking to relevant interest pages

• Search Integration: all interests searchable via suggestions and results

• Profile Integration: followed interests visible on profiles, powering personalization

• Home Page: Popular Interests widget for browsing

• Notifications: interests powering Braze push ("A title matching your interest is now streaming on one of your preferred services")

I designed each touchpoint, wrote requirements, defined the hero images, wrote all 195 definitions, led the keyword tag grooming, and created the beta testing homework.

Collaborative effort

Interests required coordination across 10+ teams:

• Apps engineering (iOS, Android)

• Web/Foundation (IMDbNext)

• Search/Discovery (searchability, relevance)

• Personalization (PWR recommendations integration)

• Monetization (ad placement on interest pages)

• Editorial (content curation)

• Marketing (launch strategy)

• Customer Service (support documentation)

• Contribution/Quality (keyword tagging)

• Trust & Safety (content policy)

Launch

November 2023: Apps (iOS + Android) — Worldwide

195 Interests launched globally on mobile apps. A new page type (Interest Page) and a new const (inconst) were introduced to IMDb for the first time.

First two weeks:

• 1.8MM page views across all Interest pages

• 77K customers added at least one Interest

• 371K visits to title pages driven from Interests

• 57K watchlist adds

• 1.9K video views

July 2024: Web — Worldwide

200+ interests launched on IMDb.com with SEO-optimized pages and distinct URLs.

• 3.4MM monthly interest page views on web (65% mobile web, 35% desktop)

• Web interest pages drove 522K title page visits and 43.9K watchlist adds per month

Growth & Evolution

Expanding the taxonomy

• May 2024: Added 16 new interests (8 anime, 4 action, 2 drama, 1 lifestyle, 1 form) and added search integration
  Role: Designed search integration patterns

• Aug 2025: "Add to Interests" on web, follows synced across platforms
  Role: Designed follow UX, related interests widgets, profile integration

• Oct 2025: Language Interests — 30 languages worldwide
  Role: Selected all 30 languages, wrote definitions, selected hero images. Hindi reached top 10 within 1 month.

• Apr 2026: Movies & Shows widget consolidation (4 widgets → 1) + watched progress bar
  Role: Oversaw new designs, mentored Teddy on execution, owned apps implementation

• May 2026: Engagement features: hero redesign, featured video widget, news carousel
  Role: Oversaw new designs, mentored Teddy on execution, owned apps implementation

• May 2026: 68 franchise Interest pages (Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, etc.)
  Role: Oversaw expansion, mentored Teddy on execution

From 195 → 280+ interests across genres, subgenres, forms, techniques, languages, and franchises in 2.5 years.

Making popular interests dynamic

I drove the replacement of the static "Popular Interests" list with a dynamic ranking based on trailing 4-week pageviews — automatically reflecting seasonal trends and cultural moments.

Impact

Sustained metrics (October 2024, 11 months post-launch)

Metric Value Monthly interest page views (apps) 5.0MM Monthly interest page views (web) 3.4MM Customers visiting 1+ interest page 1.38MM (7.2% of MAU) Monthly title page visits driven 1.4MM (apps) + 522K (web) Monthly watchlist adds driven 204.9K (apps) + 43.9K (web) Monthly registrations driven 15K Customers with at least one followed interest Growing (feeds personalization + notifications)

Reg-gating results (May 2026)

When IMDb experimented with requiring registration to access certain features on interest pages:

• Account creation: +2,506%

• Authentication: +19.1%

• No guardrail violations

Customer satisfaction

Post-launch research: respondents described the experience as helping them discover relevant content, identify their taste, and find things they wouldn't have found on their own.

"I can see recommendations for the top rated and popular movies that I would probably like to watch. So instead of wasting time on Netflix looking for something to watch, I can just look in my interests and then go find one of the titles from there."

"I appreciate its unique classification that helps you figure out the type of movie that you connect with."

"I really felt that IMDb wanted to know what I liked. I think I got better recommendations as a result of picking my interests."

"Narrows down what I might look further into with what I have an interest in, not just random searching. It personalizes my interaction with IMDb."

"It helps me put a name to things I like and then find more media I might enjoy."

What Interests Unlocked

The foundation for personalization (Project Inception)

Interests became the single strongest signal in IMDb's Taste Profile scoring engine — accounting for 37% of the total "For You" score weight. Every interest a customer follows or rates titles within becomes a dimension the system uses to understand their taste. The more granular the taxonomy, the better the scoring engine differentiates between customers.

I designed the Taste Profile architecture that consumes Interests as its primary input, powering per-title affinity scores (10–99) that will personalize the IMDb homepage, recommendations, and notifications.

The foundation for community (Project Greendale)

Discussion Spaces launch on interest pages — each interest becomes a community hub where fans can discuss, debate, and connect. The interest taxonomy defines the communities. I own the apps UX for this experience.

The foundation for notifications (Braze)

Followed interests power push notifications: "A title matching your interest is now streaming." This closed-loop system drives return visits by telling customers about content they explicitly care about.

Mentorship

Since 2025, I've been mentoring Teddy Viera as the lead UX designer on Interests. Teddy now owns the engagement features (empty states, filter pills, progress bars, condensed cards), franchise expansion execution, and the upcoming Guess the Quote quiz. I provide design direction, review his work, and guide his growth as a designer.

What's Next

I'm currently driving the next evolution of Interests through a wish list for the Interests Expansion team:

1. Interest hierarchy: parent/child relationships enabling signal inheritance for personalization

2. 26 new subgenres: filling taxonomy gaps across Thriller, Drama, Sci-Fi, Romance, Fantasy, Mystery, and Documentary

3. Title-Interest confidence scoring: replacing binary tagging with 0.0–1.0 for more accurate personalization

4. New categories: Literary Adaptations (by author), Eras/Decades, Mood/Tone, Studios, Events

The long-term vision: Interests becomes the connective tissue of IMDb. The system that maps the landscape of entertainment taste, connects fans who share it, and powers the AI that understands it.

Reflection

Interests is the project I'm most proud of. I wrote the vision, designed the system, selected every initial interest, wrote every definition, and drove it across 10 teams. It launched, it grew, and now it's becoming something bigger than a feature: it's the identity layer of IMDb.

The thing I got right: designing for extensibility from day one. By choosing the flexible term "interests" over "genres," by building the taxonomy to be additive, by designing the data model to support categories beyond subgenres, the system scaled naturally from 195 to 280+ and will continue growing. Every new category (languages, franchises, literary adaptations, moods) slots in without reinventing the experience.

The deeper insight: helping people name what they love is a form of empowerment. Customers told us they "learned about interests they didn't know had names." That's the magic. The system didn't just help them find content, it helped them understand themselves.