Netflix is in the process of rolling out a new homepage for smart TVs. If you haven’t got it yet, you soon will, and be prepared – it’s not great.
While reports of the new design began to surface last month. Netflix confirmed during its most recent quarterly earnings call that the new interface would now begin to roll out more broadly.
Also according to Netflix, the new interface is designed to make the streaming experience simpler.
It arrived for us earlier this week and simpler is one way to describe the experience. Another would be horrible. If anything, it is now too simple.
The very obvious difference with the new interface is the use of much larger tiles. While these definitely make it easier to see an individual title, they make it much harder to see much else.
If, like us, you often spend a lot of time searching for something to watch on Netflix, the new design is likely to make that search harder and longer. So much so that you may simply give up looking altogether.
In this sense, it definitely does simplify the experience … of not watching Netflix.
Personally, I’m also not a massive fan of the animation when switching between the super-sized titles. For whatever reason, it’s not just a comfortable animation to watch.
Simpler, Not Better
The biggest issue with the new design is discovery. As mentioned, we often spend a good amount of time scrolling across and down Netflix, and the new design has really impacted that ability.
The greater focus on individual titles is great when you know what you want to watch, as it does display more information and a larger preview – if you still have Autoplay Previews turned on. However, navigating the interface in general has taken a massive hit in the process. You can see less at the same time, scrolling feels like it takes longer, and the design just doesn’t look as good.
In addition to now showing fewer titles at a time, the side menu has been replaced with a new horizontal menu at the top. While not a huge issue in itself, the new menu contains less categories, further impacting navigation.
Tip: To get back to the very top of the new Homepage after scrolling down, simply press back on the remote.
The new design also adds the My Netflix section to the top menu. This section rolled out to mobile device users last year and is now home to titles you’ve added to your watchlist, previews you’ve watched, your watch history, and more.
Built With AI Recommendations In Mind
As mentioned, Netflix touched on the new interface during its most recent earnings call, and one of the notable points made was the greater use of personalized recommendations.
The use of AI has massive increased in streaming in recent months, and recommendations are a prime example. While these apps have always recommended content, services have recently been touting the specific AI improvements to recommendations. Take Prime Video’s recent announcement as an example.
Netflix is no different and the new interface lends itself very nicely to recommendations. If the title you want to watch is the tile you happen to be on, then the new design works great.
As Netflix CO-CEO Greg Peters recently explained, “There’s also things like we want to increasingly recognize that we’re doing, even in the same content type, different jobs for our users in different moments. And that could be Sunday afternoon family movie time. That would be a great experience that we want to provide exactly the right discovery and choosing experience for versus maybe late on Thursday night when you’re coming home and you just want to get into the next episode of the series that you’re currently cruising through.”
With this in mind, and assuming Netflix’s AI is improving as expected, the plan is for Netflix’s recommendation system to be good enough to put more relevant (even down to the time of the day) and interesting content in front of the user, making the larger titles more useful.
An App Built For Tomorrow, Not Today
Another relevant takeaway from the earnings call was the semi-admission that the new design is built for the future, and not necessarily for today.
Netflix’s increased focus on live events and games has made it necessary for the company to develop an app that more easily accommodates and promotes these new content types in the future.
“It’s hard to know exactly at this moment how much benefit that new home page will derive. I think it’s worth noting that it’s less about the improvements that we’re going to deliver initially, but it’s more about creating a structure that allows us to evolve and advance more freely than the current structure does,” Peters said.
It would appear that the old design (shown at the top of the article) had reached its limit in terms of how much Netflix felt it could evolve the experience. In contrast, the new app design makes it easier for Netflix to expand and evolve even further into these new areas in the future.
“So what we found is we need to create structures that allow us to flexibly go from one type of content and entertainment to another in terms of how we’re promoting and connecting those,” added Peters.
Of course, the future isn’t today, and in the meantime, we’re left with a far less useful interface and streaming experience.
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