This design looks so cheap to me, it’s just a bunch of random covers, there is no information about the movies presented in any way, the covers are way too big and take up an inordinate amount of space and there is nothing breaking up sections, design is just so fucking dumb now, fuck mobile
rant over 😅
And make sure everything you mouseover trying to get a blurb or something instead just jumps around like a Jack Russell terrier trying to grab your attention. I fucking hate having to find a place to park my mouse so it isn’t autoplaying some bullshit I have no interest in.
Or worse finding a space where something doesn’t auto play but scroll does work (when on a computer.)
This along with the changes to de-emphasize things like watch lists or even “continue watching” is basically the providers seeing how much they can influence users to watch what the provider wants instead of trying to cater to the users. If they find that people rarely navigate away from whatever ‘top 10’ or ‘for you’ suggestions, well, that means they have a great deal of freedom to only provide what is convenient for them and still get most of their revenue.
Everything about using the internet and its various “services” has turned to absolute garbage in the last 15 years.
It’s what happens when you let marketing dickheads be in charge of everything.
when I am king we shall hunt MBAs for sport.
Marketing has the polar opposite to the desired effect on me. I hate it so much that I actively avoid anything that is trying to sell to me. I make my purchasing choices based of a mixture of function, need and impulse (thanks ADHD)
I always check things out for myself and research carefully to find what I need.
This applys to tv as well. Which is why I set up jellyfin and put on an eyepatch.
more information = less engagement
less engagement = quarterly OKRs get missed = team budget go down
I’ve been in software too long
you show me a random movie poster I’m not gonna give a shit.
You show me a summary that says “Roland Emmerich directs the end of the world” and I’m there with the biggest bucket of popcorn ya got
I mean, if they could let you click on the picture and it “flips” over and then there’s some info and a few stills from the movie… This was how Video Rental stores worked for years.
The large cover design isn’t even the worst bit, it’s how hard it is to find concrete genre categories in a lot of these streaming apps. You’d have a bunch of overlapping categories like most popular whatever in whereever and so on, they quite literally hide the option to just go to movies -> genre -> list everything in some apps (Netflix was hard to find at some point).
Now I just pirate whatever old movies come to mind and stuff them in Jellyfin. Right now it’s Minority Report. Up next… Hmm I downloaded man from U.N.C.L.E the other day, might watch that.
Minority Report might feel a bit dated these days because so many stories have borrowed from it by now, but in its day, it was awesome. Must have watched it 20 times. Watch it, watch all the things you can based on stories by Philip K Dick, read his work and enjoy his mind.
I dont want Tom Cruise to get a single penny from me or my recommendations, but that movie is awesome!
Person of Interest is a whole TV show around a similar concept I guess (precog vs whatever the computer was called in PoI).
Anyway, I started downloads on a couple of other adaptations of his stories, total recall (the newer one because I’m more of a Colin Farrell fan these days than a Schwarzenegger fan, not that I dislike the latter or anything) and the adjustment bureau.
Been a while since I’ve seen either Blade Runner movie, not sure if I’ve seen them both or not, so those are also in the queue now. Thanks for the suggestion, I’d never actually heard of him before my current rewatch of Minority Report (I’d seen it before, just didn’t know about the original author of the story).
From memory, the new Total Recall is nothing compared to the original, even with the acting of Arnold. But that might be time colouring memories. But don’t skip the original. Colin Farrel is awesome and amazing but the script is not decided by him.
Click on a cover to get more info.
Honestly it feels a bit like browsing a shelf of books or DvD boxes or something. It certainly could have some improvements but I don’t think this is that bad.
I dont mind the Top 10 Carousel, but it would be nice if it has a Title and a Rating under it.
A lot of the “For You” algorithm stuff is fine, but I would prefer to have that in a Table. Title, Synopsis, Rating, length, Director, Cast. so if it sounds interesting, I can click through, but I am not going back and forth constantly.
Also gimmie a bit list I can sort. You can even have things like Movie Posters show when hovering over the name.
They don’t want to show you ratings, because that will make it obvious how shit their catalog is.
A big part of it is keeping you on the site, engaged. It’s best if you are watching a movie, but browsing around is good, too. At least they aren’t on a competitor’s site.
but if you mouse over the cover, it starts autoplaying a preview and you can’t stop it
Ironically the free-but-with-ads Tubi is the least bad when it comes to UI. They have categories with exhaustive lists, and even labels for movies highly rated on RottenTomatoes.
Netflix sucked for a while (don’t have it anymore). Apple TV is absolute shit now (subbed for a month to watch a few shows)
You said it. Dogshit.
I’m so glad I’ve spent the last few years backing up the file of pretty much every bit of media I enjoy, because it’s the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
Even worse when the streaming site publishes it under multiple covers. So freaking annoying.
Way too often I see a cover I don’t recognize and think it might be something I’d like, but get a couple minutes in before realizing I’ve seen it before.
I imagine it’s marketing trying to see what cover gets the most clicks but at the cost of annoying its customers
Which app is this?
I didn’t look at all the comments, but this is intentional. One of the streaming platforms (probably Netflix or Amazon) originally made an algorithm that tailors posters to the individual. It’s the usual A/B testing psychological bullshit designed to maximize your likelihood of watching a movie.
My wife watched The Get Down and another series I think it was called “Woke” (two series with predominantly black cast) back to back in the same weekend and the Netflix algorithm started to put the black character of every show as the center piece on every picture. Like we already watched house of card, we know that the black lobbyist guy is barely a support character, don’t try to fool us putting him in the center of the poster
I’m so happy I don’t have Netflix… That sounds extreamly manipulative. Interesting to know they do this but not surprising since it’s Netflix.
One of the reasons I dropped Netflix was because they kept changing the pictures on shit so I’d think there was new content only to see id already watched it when I clicked on it. That got old quick. Don’t have that issue when I just pirate shit.
Exactly. User hostile methods like this are a deal breaker.
It’s pretty terrible for the VI/Blind community
it was an option in my kodi skin. I actually went out of my way to rip it out of the source code.
Probably designed like that to increase click through
Because you have to click to work out wtf anything is.
The dangers of optimizing for the wrong numbers
Some marketer: “the click rate on this design is so much better than before, we will keep it!” And then not questioning or following up why
Seen it happening myself multiple times already
For sure. Never said it was a good thing from a ux perspective. But if marketing, mgmt, or whoever is only looking at the company click through kpi, that will drive this shitty design. The other comment I see explains it a little better, but that’s just one potential reason.
Some people also think “word bad” so they go to obscure icons and textless interfaces. Frustrates the shit out of me personally. Especially when said obscure icon has no clear distinction and no pop up text. I hate having to rely on pop up text too. Either do only text or icon with text so everyone can see and know what it is.
