Yeah, what is it with Netflix and making it impossible to find something to watch anymore? It's like you open it up and not only do all the lists change and it's not easy to find things, but they also run around changing the cover images of the series you've been watching so you don't even recognize it at first and you're hunting around to find it again.

They are clearly engaging in user hostile behavior hoping that the number of users who cancel due to being inconvenienced is less than the number who are retained/gained by being fooled into thinking there is more than there is.

I mean I think it’s more over engineering idiocy. I was staying with my cousin for a week and Was amazed at the content Netflix recommends/ surfaces him versus me. So much cool stuff that he had, versus the relative genre stuff I get in my own account

Do you know whose account is older, yours or your friend's? I'm wondering if their algorithm thinks it knows you well and thinks you won't like these shows and maybe your friend's account is newer so it tries to experiment more?

Originally, on AppleTV, when I opened the app, the first thing I’d click would let me resume watching what I was watching previously. Then, one day, it changed so they I had to scroll up or down to find the row of “continue watching”, and it wasn’t even one row up or down, I had to make an effort to look for it.

I would assume this was due them wanting me to see what else they had, or maybe feel like having to scroll would make it seem like they had a lot. Or maybe it was incompetence. Either way, I saw no reason for them to inconvenience me, so I canceled Netflix.

Our smart TV lets us swap between our five (!) profiles. Each has different trackings and recommendations (other than Star Trek TNG, which apparently three of us have watched ;)) You might consider making a new profile ("cududa2" or something) and see if that has more diverse recommendations. Try adding / watching some of the ones that are novel compared to your other list, and see if that helps.

I agree, though, I'd really like to have a _full listing_ of shows.

The Netflix UX is a balancing act between finding things that you know you want to watch and "discovering" new content to watch.

Netflix faces the same challenge that Facebook does with the news feed in that they're trying to combine two functions into the one interface that the users are familiar with.

I don't know when product managers are going to realize that one size doesn't fit all. Different people use Netflix differently and usually even the same people use it differently at different times. There should be an option to switch between these modes.

Netflix, for example, could easily have multiple modes. A discover based on my past preferences/popularity mode and a categorical listing mode. The problem is them blending these two together and then prioritizing their content arbitrarily over other better recommendations.

They do have these modes, though, right?

The home page is for discovery based on your past preferences/popularity. And there are TV and movie pages in which you can display shows by genre or even A-Z.

Disclosure: I work at Netflix and would like to make it better for everyone who uses it.

How do we access these other modes? I've never noticed it on either the Windows app, nor my Android device -- despite spending several minutes looking for it right now, after reading your comment that they exist.

When I go to Hamburger -> Anime, or Hamburger -> TV shows, it has the same style of semi-logical groupings of categories as I see normally: Crime shows, action shows, classic shows, suggestions for me, etc -- but there seems to be no affordances to affect ordering, nor menu items that would reflect that. The settings menu is useless, as it consists only of links to the account details, privacy statement, and terms of use.

I really hope that the answer isn't "Log into our website instead of using our native app!", though perhaps the feature warrants such an experiment.

In the Android mobile app, which has recently seen some excellent improvements, I'm unable to find an alphabetical listing as well. One can select genres, and TV shows vs movies, but there are no affordances for sorting, only a wall of categories to scroll through.

Huh, you are correct, never realized that was possible. You have to dig a little to get to it (change view format and then select from sorting options) but it's there.

I think you guys need to make it a bit more obvious that other options are available besides the home view.

Netflix is trying to draw your attention away from the fact that they are constantly losing licensed content by conditioning you to expect a random assortment on each open. Because Disney owns its content they want to condition you to trust that the content you want is always there whenever you want to watch it. The UXs match the business models.

Specifically, they are trying to (a) spam you with Netflix options to find some Netflix content that you will get hooked on so you stop looking for non-Netflix content, and (b) give you the appearance of inifinite available content by making the content you haven't watched look different every time you see the cover image. The mistake is in breaking the illusion by also rotating the cover look of content you've already watched.

As well as the annoyance of snippet videos auto-playing as you're trying to browse titles, without an explicit user action for "show me a snippet of this".

Note that Disney+ does this as well by default, though there's a setting to turn it off.

Check out Reelgood [1]. It aggregates all of the streaming services and allows you to filter on genre, IMDB, and Rotten Tomatoes. I don't have to waste time looking through a bunch of junk to find something worth watching anymore.

[1] - https://reelgood.com/

That looks interesting. I've been using instantwatcher for a while. It does Netflix well. The Amazon side is frightening in the amount of 'content' they host and I guess the API for Amazon Prime doesn't break things into usable subcategories as well as Netflix.

Netflix has had A-Z sort for years. On web, click on TV Shows / Movies, then click on the four box icon, and then change it from 'suggestions for you' to 'A-Z' or 'Z-A'.

1. Not on iPad or Android. Yes on desktop Web

2. That's well hidden! Thanks for the tip!

When I scroll, it won’t show me anything past the letter K. It’s also displays a grid of boxes with artwork instead of a simple easy-to-scan text list.

From third party sites that index Netflix content, looks like they have a little under 3000 movies, most of which I’ve never heard of.

Versus Disney+, which seems to have over 600 movies with quite a few big titles.

You know you're screwing up UX when just pulling an 8 or 9 year old copy out of the repo, making it pass tests, then deploying, would result in an immediate, massive improvement.

Though as other commenters note, making the interface nicer for the user is, apparently, contrary to their interests, or they'd stop doing the exact opposite so much.