Decoding Netflix's user experience (UX) | with City St George's, University of London 

In this episode, we take a closer look at Netflix's user experience, highlighting its strengths and areas for improvement. We explain what user experience (UX) is, what makes a bad UX, and why creating a great experience is so important for keeping users in a competitive market. We also explore the challenge of maintaining high UX standards in a fast-paced, tech-driven world

Participants

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ
• Nick Hine - professor in user experience engineering 
• Stephann Makri - HCI academic, specialising in Human-Information Interaction 

Transcript

Stephann Makri: For me, UX is about creating user experiences that help make people's lives easier through technology. So they're about understanding users and their needs with technology and where technology might be frustrating them or making their lives more difficult.

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ. I’m your host Emily Slade and in this episode we look at user experience, specifically focusing on the streaming platform, Netflix.

Stephann Makri: Hi, I'm Stephann Makri, I'm an academic in human computer interaction at City St George's University of London.

Nick Hine: My name is Nick Hine. I'm professor of UX engineering at City St George's University of London.

Emily Slade: So in a nutshell, what is UX?

Nick Hine: I have a reference to the ISO standard, as a reference which is often used when defining UX. And in fact, it's the reference that the British Computer Society also used, and they say, a person's perception and response resulting from the use of or anticipated use of a product, system or services, various people will take different angles on that and maybe accentuate or emphasise different elements and discuss it, but that in a nutshell, is a reference standard that we might use for what UX is.

Stephann Makri: For me, UX is about creating user experiences that help make people's lives easier through technology. So they're about understanding users and their needs with technology and where technology might be frustrating them or making their lives more difficult, and then figuring out ways, based on an understanding of those needs, that we can design technology to improve things for them.

Emily Slade: Excellent. And why is it important?

Nick Hine: People have expectations. They have needs, and they make an investment in technology, and they expect that technology to deliver against their needs and expectations. Therefore, what happens when they use that technology matters? So what what a good UX would be, would be successful, satisfactory or delightful in the sense that they are able to achieve what it is they set out to do, and they have needs, or it could be unsuccessful, disappointing or frustrating, which would be obviously an unsuccessful or not a good user experience. And there are various different sort of levels of that. But what we're aiming for with our students, and what we're aiming for in the domain is to is really to emphasise that it should be possible to achieve a success, successful, satisfactory and delightful user experience.

Stephann Makri: UX has become increasingly important because it's one of these fields where organisations have realised that you can't make money by offering a product that's inferior to your competitors, because it's just so difficult to use. We're now used to products and services that don't create this kind of huge friction for us, that allow us to have some freedom to interact, that allow us to get things done that we want to get done, and we like those products that kind of delight us afterwards, you know, like Uber Netflix, which we'll come on to later.

Emily Slade: Yeah, absolutely. I love the both of you have decided to use the word delight. I think that's a brilliant adjective when we think about user experience. So as you said, we are going to take a closer look at Netflix as a sort of product and how it interacts with its user experience. So we'll begin with what is the nature of the user experience delivered by Netflix.

Stephann Makri: Netflix is the most used movie streaming platform in the world. It's really, really popular. It has a user experience that kind of, on the surface, does loads of really, really good things. So it allows you to kind of browse and discover TV shows and movies that you might not have ever thought of what Judy before. It allows you to kind of figure out what your tastes and interests are. It allows you to really, kind of escape in a way that maybe, like a traditional Google search bar or something, wouldn't let you do. But there is a flip side to this, and the flip side is sometimes people say, well, Netflix just gives me too much choice. I can scroll for hours and I still don't know what it is that I want to watch. And that's some of the aspects of the user experience I'd like to drill down into today.

Emily Slade: Yeah, absolutely. So does Netflix focus more on supporting its users in finding or discovering it?

Stephann Makri: So, Netflix, I would argue, is a discovery first environment. It's built by offering lots of different types of recommendations. You know, because you watch this other show, or because you like this particular genre or highly, highly rated movies in this particular area. So there's, there's loads of really quite useful ways that kind of like slices in to be able to discover new movies. But really it focuses on that kind of discovery at the expense of search. So it does. Have quite a strong search functionality, and actually they've improved it in the last few years. So you it does have powerful search where you where, when you know what you want to find, you can just kind of type it in. It will give you other suggestions too. It will help you find similar things. But really it's, it's promoting kind of discovery first. And that's actually quite unusual in digital information environments, mostly their search first?

Emily Slade: Yeah, no, that's a great point. I do find it funny, whenever you're trying to search something on Netflix, it will come up with the thing you're searching for. They just don't have it on the on the platform, which is often quite frustrating, but still quite interesting, that that's an option. So is there any related research that helps us understand what impact this might be having on Netflix's UX?

Stephann Makri: So a few years ago, we did some research that's related, but it's not about Netflix. So we, we followed people around in a bookshop. So this was a bookshop called librarian on Hanbury Street in the eastern of London. So quite a, quite a trendy area where this bookshop had been designed with the USP of this, this unique selling point of where this bookshop designed for serendipity. And I'm someone that gets really intrigued when when a bookshop says it's going to do that they were saying that we're the anti Amazon. And so we did a study inside this bookshop where we had people do find ability and discoverability tasks. So we had them do tasks where they were, they chose to look for a specific book where they knew it already or a specific author, and they also did a task where they just discovered that they just browse without a particular aim in mind. And possibly unsurprisingly so this, this bookshop was designed in really quirky ways. So it was designed with unconventional kind of shelf labeling. So, like, bad feminism, enchantment for the disenchanted. So not traditional kind of fiction, non fiction. But also they did other, like, really innovative things. They had, like curated sections and lots of places with book covers, kind of showing to showcase books. So there was, there was a lot of a discovery kind of element. And unsurprisingly, we found that people, it really, really supported people in discovering, and more than just discovering, it supported people in encountering new, useful information that they hadn't found before. You know, they were finding these books, and they were saying, Look, I just can't leave without buying this book. So it really, really delighted them in a way that you know that that is a great user experience. But then, what do you think happened when they tried to find the books that they were looking for? They couldn't So ironically, the only way some of them found books they were actually looking for was by accident, and so it was this kind of trade off. And I think Netflix demonstrates this kind of trade off by heavily supporting discovery. It means that kind of supporting findability is somewhat is made a little bit more difficult. And that's, you know, that's not to say it's bad. I mean it Netflix does great in supporting people to discover new things, but when, when you need that little bit more guidance, it's a little bit trickier. And so, like, what I think Netflix should be doing is, is allowing a little bit more kind of flexibility, so people maybe can be moving a bit more seamlessly between browse and search, they can be given maybe a bit more information about the programs that they're watching, maybe more than just some some kind of IMDb data type ratings, but some more reviews, some more detailed information, so that then they can be trying to figure out, well, okay, like this looks intriguing, But is it going to be useful for me? So allowing, I guess, a more seamless blend of finding and discovering would be what I would recommend for an even better user experience.

Emily Slade: Yeah, amazing. It's interesting that you talked about those sort of fun, quirky discoverability genres, as it were, because Netflix have now started doing a very similar thing, where, whether it's near the academy awards season, they'll get all their award winning movies in a playlist together, or whether it's just pre teen girl in a love triangle, that's also a playlist that I've seen before. So that's it's really fun, but you make some really good points there.

Stephann Makri: I think Netflix are really good, actually, at thinking about, like, what could be some some novel ways that we could allow people those slices in what could be some really novel ways that we allow people to discover, but, you know, they could be doing even more of that. So there could be ways of, kind of allowing people to do a bit more intersecting of these, you know. So this particular genre, plus, you know, similar to this director that I love, the opportunity I think comes when you think about, well, can I understand what users really need? But also, can I understand my area really well? Do I know what people love with movies? You know, something that will will make me laugh, and it's easy to watch because I'm in a, I'm in a sit back moment today, and I think that's another nice opportunity for Netflix.

Emily Slade: Yeah absolutely. Lately. So how does Netflix deliver its user experience?

Nick Hine: I think that's a really important point, because what Stephann's been saying about the experience that a user has when they are engaged with Netflix is absolutely predicated on Netflix getting so much right. The first thing is that Netflix offers this experience on phones, on tablets, on televisions, on media streamers, perhaps even games, boxes, this type of thing. So they've got to be able to deliver a satisfactory, delightful experience on all those platforms, taking into account that our expectation on those platforms actually is subtly different. So if we're watching something on a bus on a phone, we maybe don't have the same critical expectation that we would if we were sitting in front of an 85 inch TV in our own homes with some friends. So they've got to deliver the media out to the individual platforms, and they've got to deliver it to the right people. So there's got to be a contract in place. Netflix is not only a business, but it's a mediator between you and the media producer, and that's a that's a complex relationship, Netflix has to make that as seamless and as frictionless as possible. So their their whole management of their customer base is really critical, including, for example, things like, you know, managing different members as a family, managing a situation when your grown up kids go to university and do they still maintain their family identity? And therefore, can I still pay for my kids to watch when I'm when they're at University and I'm at home, for example? So that whole relationship between the user and the customer, if you like, which is subtly different and the provider is a complex relationship that Netflix has, but it also has to make sure that it can actually get that media to you. So, you know, as we get better and better broadband in our homes, that's increasingly apparently feasible and doable, but in a way, if our internet service provider goes down. It may be Netflix that gets the criticism. So their relationship with the whole infrastructure provider from all of the service providers who provide their say, their billing and management and everything, if somebody makes a mistake there and they're dependent on someone else's technology. So Netflix reputation gets broken and because they gave their user a bad experience, if the ability to actually get the media out to the device mobile, you know, if that breaks down, then you know, if you're going through a tunnel on a train, you kind of expect to lose the Netflix signal, but if you're going through your local town, you don't expect that. So there are, there are a whole set of technologies in place which make Netflix work, all of which have to be in place and working well so that the users can have the ultimate experience, which is that they forget they're watching Netflix, they forget that they're watching on a phone. They engage with the media that they've selected. So in a sense, all of that technology becomes transparent, and that generally is a good indicator of a good user experience. You forget the technology, and you engage with what it was that you wanted to engage with.

Emily Slade: That's so interesting. There's some really good points there.

Stephann Makri: There's some work in psychology where there's this idea of Heidegger's hammer. You only notice the hammer when you've smacked your thumb with it. You know, otherwise, it's just seamless.

Emily Slade: Absolutely and it's, I think it evolved as well. Like a few years ago, my my friend was watching a film on Netflix, and then she was going to come back to it the next day, and it had been taken off. And now we're pre warned, they've put something in place for their user experience. This is leaving in 30 days, so you have that countdown, and you're not just Tim Roth is suddenly taken away from you overnight. So I think that's really interesting. And regarding the technology as well. It's, do you have any sort of feedback to them on how? How on earth are they meant to compete with something that's so out of their hands in terms of like broadband and Wi Fi?

Nick Hine: Okay, the delivery of what Netflix is as an experience is sometimes not in Netflix hands, but by being able to offer their their service on a variety of platforms, they're tapping into the core idea behind the internet, which was redundancy. There will be another way to achieve this, and it may well be that they can. They can explicitly state, okay, there's a problem here. Switch. To so switch to your mobile or something like that, in order to prompt the user to continue to have the Netflix experience, even though the delivery is is is breaking down. We can't underestimate how difficult this is, because, you know, an experience in a city is quite different to the experience in a rural community, you know. And so Netflix have in many ways pioneered the idea of pre loading their films and their popular material into somewhere which is physically and therefore accessibly local to you, so that you may not actually get it directly off a Netflix server. You may get it off an intermediary, maybe even another viewer, viewing on an audio visual streaming box that doesn't get wiped off the audio visual streaming box, necessarily immediately, so that it can be fed to the viewer, if that viewer is local, and therefore can benefit from that as a delivery, rather than streaming it all the way from a Netflix server. And Netflix has so many servers all around the world that it runs and then these intermediate points where people can actually get the material delivered from.

Emily Slade: So what constraints determine what Netflix can offer to customers?

Nick Hine: I think there are a number. First of all, licensing is clearly an important constraint. Different material will be available in different markets, even down to the level of subtitles and dubbing. You know, different markets prefer subtitling, different other markets prefer dubbing. Do they have the material available for that market in the preferred you know, in the preferred package, local laws and policies like what material would be banned in a particular location, or how is it classified? Is it classified as not suitable for children in one market, but okay in another market, so that they have to negotiate that and the clearly, the local and regional and national infrastructures, as I say, the experience in a in a rural infrastructure, is very different from the experience in a city and in some in some places, the rural infrastructure is is really quite weak, and therefore you may move from one place where you can get good coverage in a re in a rural area, move to another place and expect to have the same thing, and it just doesn't work. So all of those are quite complex negotiations, which Netflix have to engage in with all of their in all of their markets.

Emily Slade: Yeah, absolutely. I personally think they do quite a good job on all of those when you suppose you compare them to other streaming platforms that perhaps don't offer subs or Dubs and that sort of thing. I've recently noticed that, and I've always almost taken for granted that I can watch it dubbed or subbed on Netflix, and then you go to somewhere else and you can't.

Nick Hine: So it's interesting that question of even subtitling and dubbing is actually quite complex in ways which you might not expect. You might have a family that has mixed linguistic ability, so someone whose first language is English and someone whose first language is Spanish. And so which subtitling Do you want? Do you want it in the English, or do you want it in the Spanish? If you're watching with the children, you might choose to have the local language as the subtitling but if you're watching it with adults only, you might choose to have the first native language, the most popular native language in the room, for different reasons. So these are not trivial questions, and they actually require quite a lot of understanding and feedback from the users as to what works for them and not.

Emily Slade: Yeah, 100% amazing. So how does this all influence UX?

Nick Hine: Can I go back to customers expect? Customers expect from a brand? So they expect, and they expect the brand to deliver, maybe because the brand said it could, or maybe their experience says the brand can. So when the brand doesn't deliver, customers are surprised. They're frustrated. They're put out Now, interestingly, often people will complain, but they won't praise so, you know, it's maybe more difficult for Netflix to know they're getting it right. They have to do more more work to know that they're getting it right, because somebody will tell them very quickly when they're getting it wrong. Perhaps that's good, you know, perhaps, actually, that helps Netflix. Know that they've got a problem and they can deal with it quickly, but anything that adds or diminishes value will affect your relationship with your customer and your user. And by customer I might mean the person who pays the bills in a family and the user might be the children. So you have to think of both of those potential stakeholders in the whole process. Netflix brief will be to retain customers. And how do you do that? Have happy users? So that's why all of this UX, be it, be it, from the the day to day experience of searching and finding and everything through to all of the invisible stuff, the delivery of all of that that matters for the brand and the retention of customers and the satisfaction of users.

Stephann Makri: Let's come back to delight what. What product would you rather use? Would you like one that's just mediocre and helps you get your things done but in a difficult way, or one that delights you and really creates a user experience that makes you want to use it?

Emily Slade: Yeah, I had one more Netflix question, until we move on to talking about the MSc courses that you guys offer. What are you currently watching on Netflix?

Nick Hine: Monk.

Emily Slade: A rewatch or a new watch?

Nick Hine: No, we didn't know about it, but it was actually my mother in law in Colombia who got us onto it. And it's a little bit of a slog for me personally, because it's eight series with, I don't know, 12 episodes, but actually it's pleasant.

Stephann Makri: I'm watching Black Mirror at the moment on Netflix, and I love technology, but I think sometimes we need that healthy dose of cynicism to remind us that we can't let technology just rule the world. We need to care about people too.

Emily Slade: Absolutely amazing. So let's talk about the MSC courses that you guys provide that discuss everything that we've been talking about already.

Nick Hine: We have two programs at Citi, and across the two programs, we're able to look at UX from the experience very much of the person and what they're experiencing in the moment. And is that satisfactory or not satisfactory? Is it delightful, or is it frustrating? Through to how do we deliver that experience, particularly as technology gets increasingly complex and there are so many dependencies in the delivery chain of an experience you know you might consider going into a supermarket and the all the technologies that are involved in the simple task of selecting and purchasing right up until the moment that you find a way of paying for it. Even on the checkouts, you have five or six options on there which are part of the payment process. Now they used to be quite like that. So, you know, in an increasingly complex technology mediated world, we're looking at the whole the whole process of experience.

Emily Slade: There's more information in the show notes below. If you want to learn more about those courses, they do sound fascinating. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been really, really fun.

Stephann Makri: It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Emily.

Nick Hine: Thank you very much for for this opportunity.

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Nick and Stephann for their time. For more information on the courses you can head to prospects.ac.uk. If you enjoyed the episode feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify - for a full length video version of this episode check out our YouTube channel @futureyoupod. Thank you as always for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

Find out more

• Take a look at the MSc Human-Computer Interaction Design.
• Read all about the MSc User Experience Engineering.
• Learn more about being a UX designer.
• Discover what it's like to be a UX researcher.
• Introducing MSc User Experience Engineering.