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Streaming services have kind of ruined movies for me a bit. When using Netflix you get the impression that what they really want customers to do is to kind of
by bborud 5y ago
Streaming services have kind of ruined movies for me a bit.
When using Netflix you get the impression that what they really want customers to do is to kind of "hang around in the lobby", scroll and experience the frustration of re-rejecting all the content you have already rejected a hundred times by scrolling past them.
And Amazon...I can never quite figure out why they show me so much content that I can't access as part of my subscription or that requires some form of extra payment to watch. I guess it fits in with the overall Amazon theme of showing me merchandize that doesn't actually ship to where I live on their main site. Or that awful iPhone app that keeps asking me which amazon store I want to use, because after many years, Amazon still haven't figured out how to fix this.
It is becoming ever more rare that me and the wife find something to watch. We scroll around for 10 minutes without finding anything, get bored, watch the news, turn off the TV and go do something else.
The thing is: there is no UX innovation on streaming sites. They don't actually do anything intelligent about the knowledge they have about you. They keep showing you stuff you are not interested in and you have no way of telling them "look, I'm not into superhero movies" or "please don't show me anything Nick Cage is in".
It would help if you could rapidly mark content as "I'm not interested", and remove it from sight so you don't have to scroll through screens of stuff you aren't going to watch again and again.
Apple's movie thing is slightly better. You can actually navigate through a slightly better catalogue of movies, but the UX isn't great. And it makes no use of any knowledge about you to find content.
Why has innovation on streaming service user experience stopped? Why are they so terrible?
- psyc 5y agoBefore culling a few, I was subscribed to 5 streaming services. Typically, it would take me about 3 weeks to find something worth watching, and then a week or two to binge it. That’s TV. I can barely ever find a movie I can sit through. Netflix was always like that as long as I can remember, and the others work the same way. A few gems sitting on a haystack of blah.
- duncanawoods 5y ago> And Amazon...I can never quite figure out why they show me so much content that I can't access If you click the "Free to me" link at the top then it works pretty well for just what you can access. The filter carries forward if you then filter for genres.
- bborud 5y agoYeah, but why show me content I can't even buy? And showing it prominently? That's just terrible design and makes Amazon the last streaming service I browse. If at all. The only time I actually end up watching stuff on Amazon is those 1-2 times per year they have something bingeworthy that I've learned about somewhere else. And then it's always "aw crud, Amazon - wonder if I even have access to it at all".
- MarkLowenstein 5y agoDesigners and programmers seem to have a blind spot for the "I'm not interested" idea. I've pushed this for 15 years whenever I can in products we make, and literally no one gets it (I call it the "Sucks" button). What would make Netflix browsing, or any search result list, way better? Getting to go down the list and quickly say "Sucks. Sucks. Sucks." The usual counter-point is "What will people do if they change their minds later?", which makes me tear my hair out.