So? I like Netflix's front-end. So does my daughter, my mother, my mother's mother, my dad (who is terrible with tech), and almost everyone else I know.

Craigslist is much the same, what they have is easy to recognize, very easy to use for both sellers and buyers, and it has been consistent.

If it's not broken don't fix it.

>If it's not broken don't fix it.

That's some serious survivor bias with Craigslist.

There have been a slew of useful services that have sprung up over the years (e.g. Padmapper) involving Craigslist data, only to have Craiglist send cease and desists.

If anything, Craigslist has stymied the progression of internet classifieds by not changing with the internet.

Most of the non-tech users I know respond enormously negative to changes, so much so that any improvement would have to be gigantic indeed to justify that cost.

To immediate, drastic, noticeable changes.

Amazon, which arguably has the same userbase, has successfully managed to change their interface over the years by gradually adding functionality.

Craigslist has only bullied others who make a better experience for users.

The types of people who use Amazon, are going to be different then the types of people who use Craigslist. You said it yourself, Craigslist is the internet classifieds. Young people don't use the classified sections, it's predominantly used by those who would have used the classifieds in a regular newspaper, the older, geriatric population; and these people just don't appreciate change. It may be a positive change, it may make things easier, but they learn one way to do it, and gosh darn it, that's exactly how they want it to work every-time.

I should add, I think craigslist is one of the few sites out there that can get away with not updating their UI, so it's not so much that I disagree with several of your points, as it is, I disagree with your points in this specific case. :)

From my perspective, it's just Craiglist has done a magnificent job of evaluating their user-base.

They do, but as long as the change is generally positive they eventually come around.

Each of Facebooks major UI/functionality changes over the years has come with a heap of resistance from users. Not many though if given the choice now would want to undo the past 5 years or more of changes.

> So? I like Netflix's front-end. So does my daughter, my mother, my mother's mother, my dad (who is terrible with tech), and almost everyone else I know.

Not sure what your point is here. I don't particularly like it, I have friends who complain about it, and some of my coworkers (who are great with tech, btw) also dislike it.

Have none of the people you mentioned have ever recognized an actor but have been at a loss for where they've previously seen them? Say, that's not something that Netflix could help with?

The continued existence) of InstantWatcher, CanIStreamIt?, Flixster, Fanhattan, Yidio, proves that there's a not-entirely-satisfied portion of their customer base. Why it seems they're doing nothing to appeal to those users is beyond me.

> Craigslist is much the same, what they have is easy to recognize, very easy to use for both sellers and buyers, and it has been consistent.

It is consistent, I'll give you that. Sellers ignoring phone calls, not returning voice mails, unreplied emails, listings for things which have already been sold with an irate seller that does pick up but then calls you an idiot for not telepathically knowing the item has been sold, bait-and-switch tactics masquerading as incompetence, the poor quality of listings themselves - that listing in autos for $1 is definitely accurate. Listings gaming the search by cramming half the dictionary at the end of the post. People saying they'll meet you to buy the item and then being an hour late or just completely flaking.

Yeah, that's totally not broken.

> If it's not broken don't fix it.

Back in 2006, smartphones weren't broken, but I'm sure glad Apple came along and 'fixed' it.

> People saying they'll meet you to buy the item and then being an hour late or just completely flaking.

Clearly a problem with the front-end.

Craigslist could have an escrow service for money so as to disincentive not following through, or only staking claim to an item if you're serious about paying for it.

They could have a seller/buyer rating system cough eBay.

I mean, you're not even trying...

I think he was trying to point out those aren't UX issues, they're features you wish existed

he's not arguing the craigslist UX is broken just that there are lots of areas where it could be improved.

> they're features you wish existed

the netflix UX is not broken. it just hasn't changed. yea, we clearly want more features. and netflix should too - getting to the top and then stagnating is exactly what their predecessor did..

just because you're happy with the way things are, doesn't mean it cannot possibly improve.

>Have none of the people you mentioned have ever recognized an actor but have been at a loss for where they've previously seen them? Say, that's not something that Netflix could help with?

Netflix does help with this. Just click on the actor's name in the movie description and it will show other movies (available on Netflix) that the actor is in.

You're right, but the "available on Netflix" caveat is a big one. If only there was some sort of database, on the internet for movies. I don't know what you'd call it, but maybe they could have a more complete list of an actor's works, and Netflix could link to them.

It's like Netflix thinks that by pretending video doesn't exist outside of Netflix that it'll just go away.

Flux Plus does IMDB + RottenTomatoes + some other stuff: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/flix-plus/fcjjgdna...

The funny thing is imdb is owned by Amazon, and Amazon Video has the worst browsing and discovery interface ever invented by man. They make no use of the data at all.

It's almost funny, but I often point to Amazon's video choices to be an example that's worse than Netflix... I actually have a Prime and a Netflix account, though generally prefer torrents. :-/

I really wish that Netflix's UI wasn't so attrocious.. when I'm in a browser, there are so much better ways of interacting than what they offer... for a tablet/phone I kind of get it... the problem is the box covers aren't great for navigating quickly... Many of which you can't even tell what the movie is without hovering over.. or the cover doesn't offer insight.

Especially when it comes to discovery. They also offered multiple users for interacting far too late.. too many devices are tied to the default account user.

I'm not sure what the best option is.. but it certainly isn't what's in place, and could be much better..

The issue with Netflix's frontend is I'll just sit there endlessly scrolling around, trying to find something to watch.

The interface for Plex engages me in such a way that I want to watch a movie. (My roommate feeds movies to Plex so I'm not just feeding movies that I'm predisposed to watching to it.)

Has any of them tried to find movie recommendations from Netflix? For me, it sometimes shows me a dozen or so recommendations on the front page. Almost all of them are TV shows. One or two are movies that only showed up after I added them to My List on my own, and I have no interest in the rest. Meanwhile, sometimes I stumble across a DVD-only movie for which it recommends 4.8 stars for me. So where can I just list those?

[edit: addition:] When it comes to instant, I usually end up browsing for half an hour and giving up, but that might be more a function of the kind of content that's there than the interface.

You get mostly TV shows because most of the good content on Netflix is TV.

They can show you movie recommendations, but I'm guessing you won't like many of them.

I think Netflix is stagnating on content, not features. I'm really considering canceling my subscription because I feel like I've exhausted everything worth watching (granted this is highly subjective, but more and more when I get on Netflix I've browsed around for 5 - 10 minutes and just given up).

I feel the same way. I've found great movies and tv shows in the past, but currently it's really hard to find something worth watching.

Why are new features and change inherently a good thing?

In my experience building consumer products "feature creep", and "unnecessary complexity" are the enemy. Not lack of features and frequent updates.

I agree, Netflix serves it's purpose like a champ. A company doesn't need to run their front end like a hackathon in order to be great, in fact, much of their demographic might have had a learning curve just to learn how to watch movies on their ipad, so doing drastic UI redesigns might actually create a churn from subscriptions. Netflix works on basically every platform(even ubuntu now) with basically no issues except for the native install, and gets right to the video after only a few clicks/touches. Remember when they were carousel and now they're a direct slider? Seems they would simplify due to data. Also the argument for no front end work I find to be unfounded as some of THE BEST Javascript, reactive programming seems to be coming out of the netflix shop with amazing event listening management presentations and and other impeccable reactive front end coming out of netflix. I use those videos to study and learn tons on reactive javascript and find their front end to be exactly what it is. On a meta level and simplicity level superbly build and prestine.

The lack of frontend innovation might have something to do with the sheer number of native clients for different platforms. Software fragmentation can be a bitch...

Random missing features on every platform are also Netflix's fault. Whose else would it be?

> The next company that comes to mind is Craigslist.

Last I heard (and this was years ago), the crap UX is an intentional design decision from the top. I can't say that about Google or Netflix, but AFAIK with Craigslist, they're deliberately not trying to make the UX modern.

Agree to all. I've wondered about this for a while. It seems Netflix works well if you're real particular about what you want to watch, but if you just want to "turn it on" and hang out it sort of struggles. I have to make a conscious choice about what to watch. I'd love to see an update wherein their search engine starts playing something in the background based on what I've watched before or what they think I want to watch. To be honest, I'd love to see Netflix be way more aggressive in marketing too. Sponsor the World Cup or something...truly free me from cable by giving me live sports. The NHL is struggling in a lot of markets...start carrying them (Bias admitted: from Minnesota). I've "cut the cord" for 3 years now and I still have to sneak a way to watch baseball/football/hockey through other people's cable boxes. I think sports might be the way to truly break cable for Netflix.

I've been working on a side project for just that problem! Basically it sticks a programming guide on top of Netflix (and soon Hulu/HBO Go/Youtube/etc) and just autoplays a random shuffle for the channel you choose. It's still really early stage, but you can check it out here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ottoplay/jckdbebff...

Maybe there is a market for what you are suggesting, but I like On Demand services like Netflix because I get to pick what I want when I want. Netflix is decent at suggesting things to watch based on my viewing history, but I have never been in a scenario where I wish it would just start playing something for me. I don't want Netflix to play stuff for me, I just want them to keep adding/making new content.

>Where's the Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB integration?

Oddly enough, Rotten Tomatoes has Netflix Integration:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/dvd-all/?services=netfl...

Whether this is through the public API or not is unknown.

Netflix seems to be recruiting for the search side of things (so says the Netflix recruiter in my inbox), so at least they know that they need to fix that part. :/

> Where's the Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB integration?

You think Amazon would allow IMDB integration?

I'm sure they would if Netflix was paying - After all Netflix runs on AWS which they have no problem with! :)

I suppose the issue would be that Amazon are now directly competing with Netflix via their own video offering, so may be reluctant to give Netflix the means to outdo them at their own game.

In my own personal opinion, Amazon's UX for video is not all that great either, so it would seem both parties have plenty of room to innovate in this space at least, which can only be a good thing. I'm paying a subscription for both, and although I currently use Netflix more, it really wouldn't surprise me if Amazon started rapidly working on their video UX - they've got 'buying stuff' down to a tee, so it'll be interesting to see what they can do with streaming video.

Exactly... Netflix is the New Craigslist.