‘MyOscars’ Prototype
MyOscars is your ultimate hub for ranking, rating, and predicting Oscar winners. Designed for film lovers and awards season junkies, the app lets users track nominees by category, explore Oscars history all the way back to 1929, and build personalized predictions. Create an account to rate and review films, mark what you’ve watched, and share your takes with friends. From Oscar buzz to your own “Best Picture” picks, MyOscars makes following the Academy Awards interactive, social, and fun.
Project Overview
MyOscars is a hub to rank, rate, and predict Oscar winners!
Users have to create an account to use it. The home page will feature films, including those with Oscar buzz, current nominees, and more. In the app, users can choose to track any category of nominees from that year. The home page will feature all active trackers.
Users will be able to view the nominees for any year (starting in 1929, the year of the first Oscars). Each page for the year will show the nominated films and winners for each category.
Users can mark if they've watched a movie and rate it. Users can also review each movie and share those reviews with friends through other messaging platforms.
Users can also view a film's profile, which displays the film's year, director, main actors, nominations and wins, and ratings and reviews (if available).
There will be a “My Predictions” page, where users log predicted winners and nominees for any category.
Finally, in the user’s profile page, they will see their trackers again, and users can view their reviews and list of watched films.
Project Motivation
One of my favorite times of the year is award season! I love watching beautifully crafted films and shows get the acclaim they deserve. A few years ago, I made it my mission to watch all Best Picture nominees for the Oscars. My friend and I created an Instagram account to post our predictions, our favorites, and what we though about them. I track my watchlist in my Notes app on my iPhone, but it would be so much better if there was an app for this. I tried using Letteboxd at some point, but for me it's not super user-friendly. So why not create one myself?
Research & Discovery
Market Context
Primary users will be film enthusiasts like me who want to track their progress in watching nominated films, review them, and predict winners! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can also benefit from an app like this existing.
Target Audience
Letterboxd: allows you to log, review, rate, and rank films. Users can follow friends and see their activity.
GoldDerby: a website to make predictions. It has forums and predictions for Golden Globes, SAGs, Oscars and more.
IMDb: IMDb offers comprehensive data on films, actors, and awards, including Oscars. However, it’s a more general platform, focusing less on tracking awards progress or offering a social space for friend connections.
Competitive Landscape
Personas
Sophie is a film critic who tracks critically acclaimed movies and shares her predictions on social media. Throughout the year, she'll watch movies and post reviews about them on her social media platform. She, however, manages her lists in her Notes app. And it can get a little inconvenient. She wants a centralized place to rank her movies and Oscars predictions.
Ari is a film buff who watches all Oscar-nominated films every year. She has a tradition of comparing predictions with her friends and hosting a watch party. When tracking movies, it's a bit time-consuming always to have to Google or even memorize the nominees.
Tony is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his achievements in Sound. He needs to watch all the nominees and pick a winner for that category.
As a film history buff, I want to be able to see how many Academy Award nominations a movie has.
As a film critic, I want to be able to access my movie reviews easily.
As a curious moviegoer, I want to know which movies were nominated last year so that I can discuss them with others.
As an academy member, I want to track my watchlist so that I don't miss any updates.
As a logged-in user, I want to view my collection of reviews quickly.
User Stories
As a logged-in user, I want to be able to share my predictions with others via a messaging platform.
As an Oscars fan, I want to predict winners for the next ceremony.
As a user, I want a visual representation of my tracker so that I can quickly gauge my progress.
As a user, I want to view movie trailers without having to leave the app.
As a user, I want to select categories to track so that I don't track the ones I'm not interested in.
Prototype
I built the prototype using Framer.
I handled data using the Framer CMS and made API calls to The Movie Database.
I created components using React with assistance from Claude AI.
Reflection
Inspired by my love for movies and awards season, I created MyOscars, an app to track and rate Oscar-nominated films. I focused on building the movie library feature, using Framer CMS to manage data and design responsive components. While I faced a steep learning curve—especially with Framer’s coded components—I learned a lot about UI design, data handling, and even how to incorporate LLMs into my workflow.
The Oscars Library page is fully functional: users can click on any year to explore accurate nominee and winner data dating back to 1929. Though there are still features I’d like to build, I’m proud of what I created. This experience taught me that the most powerful designs often come from personal connection, and that empathy is at the heart of great digital experiences.
Next Steps:
Build the Reviews and Predictions functionality
Organize a Notion database to support user credentials, trackers, watched films, ratings, and reviews.
Build out Framer functionality to support these features and enable full interactivity for users