What Hath Netflix Wrought?!

[Snaploud]

I'm surprised they let it go this long. I guess nobody at Netflix works during weekends.

[Snaploud]

Not a good sign:

Netflix's Vice President of Corporate Communications, Steve Swasey said, “Most of [the comments] have the same theme, which is ‘what was wrong with it before?’ What we’re saying is we’ve tested this extensively, we know the vast, vast majority of people like this. It’s new, it’s easier, it’s cleaner.” He also went on to state that they were "absolutely" keeping the new interface. "We made it and tested it and researched it and tried it out and everywhere we tried it, it had a better reception. Otherwise we wouldn’t have made the change.”

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-t...#ixzz1PEb2zHPy

[J. Allen]

^ Yep. Talk about foot-in-mouth! You don't go around openly telling your customers that they're wrong, and that they don't know what they like. It's just bad business.

[Owain Taggart]

Snaploud wrote:

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Not a good sign:

Ahh, the old clueless, people like the change response! It may be cleaner, but it's not easier. In fact, most people would likely say it's harder to use because the information isn't immediately available to the eyes. Perhaps they should do some more research and find out why people dislike the change. In other words, it's one way of saying they won't change back because they've spent too much money on this design. I wonder if any of the people who've tested it complained about usability.

[I Grok Spock]

^Well, I'm sure they did. But he also says that the "vast majority" of their test subject liked it. I'm not a big fan of the new interface, but I think it's an overstatement to say that Netflix didn't do significant usability and user testing. The question may be, "did they test the right things?" Steve Swasey could also use a little help in the "communication" department.

[Owain Taggart]

Well, maybe so. But I think the importance of usability in web design is rather understated in general these days. Just seeing that page for instance is enough to tell me that they dropped a big heavy ball on their toes, bigtime. I think a better question would be, that yes, it's cleaner, but is that necessarily a good thing? If it removes key usability features that people rely on to make the site work, I don't see that as a good thing. It's rather a bad thing to have people struggle with something and get frustrated as it's more likely people will stop using a service. Also as far as test subjects go, we don't know how many people got to test it and it might be a small number also told to test specific things, or people that just tend to go with the flow and put up with it.

[Peach Wookiee]

I see a future for mom-and-pop video stores if Netflix screws up big.

[Guartho]

[Temis the Vorta]

Spot's Meow wrote:

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Okay, I'm really curious now, what is this three card thing you speak of? I want to do it!

I see that every so often, not sure why it happens or on what schedule. It's like three card monte! It gives you three blank cards supposedly based on whatever movie you returned most recently and you turn them over by clicking them to see the recommendations, which I never find useful.

This place is a better source of movie news, by far.

[J. Allen]

Guartho wrote:

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Perfect!

[sojourner]

Hehe. Anyone wanna guess if this redesign was done by the same people that screwed up Gawker Media's websites?

Thank god Gawker finally gave the option for "blog view" (like the old layout). I would be curious to see statistics as to how many people use the sites in blog view as opposed to the new site format.

[Brikar99]

I'm not certain what kind of focus group would think it's a good idea to remove sorting options... I used to be able to see the movies in a list format and sort by date or rating or what have you. Unless I'm missing something, I can't do that anymore and it's obnoxious.

[Data Holmes]

Brikar99 wrote:

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I'm not certain what kind of focus group would think it's a good idea to remove sorting options... I used to be able to see the movies in a list format and sort by date or rating or what have you. Unless I'm missing something, I can't do that anymore and it's obnoxious.

I've seen some places on the web saying that less than 10% of users used that ability on the site, and that part of this redisign was removing unused and under used features to simplify the site's database.

[Brikar99]

laaaaaame

[I Grok Spock]

J. Allen wrote:

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Perfect!

I don't see a problem with this. After all, we know that two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.