NETFLIX has given its TV app a makeover – its biggest update in 10 years.
The streaming giant is testing a new-and-improved app with viewers, which it hopes will be easier to navigate and require less “eye gymnastics,” according to Netflix exec Pat Flemming.
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Flemming told Reuters viewers eyes were flicking from “the row name to today’s top picks, to the box art, to the video, back to the synopsis”.
“We really wanted to make that simpler, more intuitive, everything easier to navigate,” he explained.
The major revamp rolled out to a subset of Netflix’s total 270million viewers on Thursday.
It includes bigger title cards for shows, a fresh layout and highlighted tidbits such as ‘Oscar nominated’ or ‘spent 8 weeks in the top 10’.
But viewers say bosses have made the app “worse”.
“I want the TV app to revert,” one onlooker wrote on X (formerly Twitter.
A second person added: “Wow, they managed to make it worse.”
Another said: “My muscle memory will need to adjust.”
Fortunately, the changes aren’t permanent – yet.
Netflix is currently just testing the waters, seeking feedback from viewers.
It’s possible the company makes even more changes – or dials back some updates that haven’t gelled well with customers.
The company has reportedly been hawk-eyed on improving engagement time, and will be making more effort to keep viewers on the app for longer.
It comes just days after Netflix announced it will removed itself from second and third-generation Apple TVs on 31 July, 2024.
According to The Verge, the streaming company wrote in an email to customers that the move is meant to “maintain the best possible Netflix experience”.
It’s a human psyche thing, not an app’s problem
By Millie Turner, Technology & Science Reporter
Every few years or so, apps go under the knife for a facelift, often changing colour theme shades, fonts, and layouts.
Then an executive comes out with a statement about how ‘contemporary’ the change is, and how it was ‘designed with users in mind’.
But apps, and the folks behind them, need to wise up to one simple fact: people don’t like change.
And there will almost always be backlash to the unveiling of a shiny new design.
We all know how it feels: opening up an app you use everyday, awash with that disgusted, frustrated feeling as your muscle memory is tripping you up over a new layout.
Whether its an “ugly” new WhatsApp update, a Facebook redesign that simply looks “gross” or a Twitter (now X) switch-up that literally gives its users headaches – people like what they know.
Human psychology plays a big role in this.
It’s obviously unreasonable to expect app’s to fade into relics of their past.
So what’s the remedy?
Time – time for consumers to have a little kick and a scream before settling into the new norm.