Jenn Godoy — PRODUCT / WEB / BRAND
© Jenn Godoy — Product Designer

MERCADO PLAY: SOCIAL DISCOVERY


PRODUCT DESIGN — UX / UI DESIGN

KEY GOAL

Explore how recommendations, saving, sharing, and existing user relationships could become part of the Mercado Play experience, making content discovery more useful while giving users easier ways to save, share, and return to recommendations from people they trust.


Concept project created as part of a product design challenge. Not implemented by Mercado Libre.

— MY ROLE

Product Designer


— SKILLS APPLIED

  • Product Thinking
  • UX Strategy
  • Competitive Analysis
  • User Flows
  • Wireframing
  • Interaction Design
  • UI Design
  • Prototyping

— PROJECT DATE

  • May 2026

Contact

email@domain.com

000-000-000


— Instagram

— Twitter

— Facebook

THE CHALLENGE

Choosing what to watch is often social. The experience wasn’t.


The starting point was a gap between how people discover content and what Mercado Play supported inside the product. Recommendations were happening outside the platform, while basic behaviors such as saving or organizing content were limited.

01

NO PLACE TO SAVE

Users had no clear way to save content or recommendations for later.


02

RECOMMENDATIONS HAPPENED ELSEWHERE

People relied on external channels such as WhatsApp to remember or share what to watch.


03

DISCOVERY WAS SOCIAL, BUT THE PRODUCT WASN’T

  • Trusted recommendations influenced decisions, but those relationships were not reflected in the experience.

Contact

email@domain.com

000-000-000


— Instagram

— Twitter

— Facebook

THE OPPORTUNITY

Looking at the current experience, industry patterns and Mercado Libre’s ecosystem.


My process changes depending on the problem, but decisions are generally informed by user behavior, feedback, page performance, business objectives, content requirements, and collaboration with product, development, marketing, and other stakeholders. I use these inputs to explore solutions, prototype quickly, validate ideas where possible, and refine the experience after launch.

1. Current Experience

What Mercado Play already supported and what was missing

The existing experience supported basic continuity through “Continue Watching,” but there was no clear system for saved content, shared use or social recommendations. This made it harder to retain intent once a user discovered something they might want to watch later.

2. Industry Patterns

What users already expect from streaming products

I reviewed common patterns across streaming and content platforms. Watchlists, multiple profiles and social sharing appeared repeatedly, making them useful reference points—but not necessarily solutions to copy directly.

WATCHLISTS

Baseline expectation for saving intent.


MULTIPLE PROFILES

Support for shared or household use.


SOCIAL FEATURES

  • Lists and sharing as discovery mechanisms.

Contact

email@domain.com

000-000-000


— Instagram

— Twitter

— Facebook

3. The Ecosystem Advantage

A differentiator that competitors could not replicate in the same way

Mercado Libre already had an active network of real user relationships through Mercado Pago. I saw an opportunity to use those existing connections to suggest relevant contacts when sharing content, and potentially prioritize recommendations from people the user already knows.

FROM INSIGHTS TO PRODUCT STRATEGY

Prioritizing the concept in three phases.


Rather than treating every idea as equally important, I organized the proposed features into phases based on their value to the user, strategic potential and relative implementation complexity.

PHASE 01

QUICK WINS

Introduce foundational behaviors such as saving, organizing and easier sharing to reduce friction and capture user intent.


PHASE 02

SOCIAL LAYER

Use the existing user network to make sharing, recommendations and shared discovery part of the product.


PHASE 03

BONUS

  • Expand the system with richer organization and shared-list functionality once the core behaviors are established.

Contact

email@domain.com

000-000-000


— Instagram

— Twitter

— Facebook

SELECTED FLOWS

Three flows that carry the core product story.


The original challenge explored a broader feature set. For the portfolio, these three flows communicate the strongest progression from a basic individual need to a more differentiated social experience.

1. Save & Organize

Capture intent without asking the user to remember what they discovered

A simple saved-list behavior creates a foundation for later discovery. Users can save a movie or series from the content detail view and return to it from a dedicated list.

2. Share & Recommendations

Move recommendations from external conversations into the product itself

The concept evolves from native device sharing into in-product recommendations using suggested contacts. Received recommendations can then be accessed and saved without requiring users to search for the title again.

Sharing Flow

Recommendation Flow

3. Family Group

Extend individual recommendations into a shared discovery space.

The Family Group concept creates a shared space where people can invite existing contacts, recommend content and build a collective list. It turns the familiar household behavior of deciding what to watch together into something the product can actively support.

Group Creation

Shared Discovery

UI EXPLORATION

Balancing ecosystem familiarity with entertainment conventions.


I explored two visual directions to evaluate how Mercado Play could remain recognizable within the Mercado Libre ecosystem while also adopting patterns users associate with content-focused experiences. Both directions were developed into high-fidelity prototypes to explore how the proposed features could work within different visual approaches.

LIGHT MODE

Familiarity + consistency with Mercado Libre.

DARK MODE

Greater content focus + stronger alignment with entertainment products.

KEY LEARNING

Final Thoughts.


The opportunity wasn’t simply to add recommendation features. It was to turn existing relationships between users into a meaningful part of content discovery and potentially create another reason to return to the platform.