THE big Netflix redesign that lost favour with viewers last summer is reportedly coming to your TV very soon.
The streaming giant began testing a new, simplified layout of its TV app in June last year.
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It changes how the Netflix homepage works, making a title’s trailer and description larger on your screen.
The update also gets rid of the left-side menu, replacing it with a streamlined selection of options at the top of the screen: search, home, shows, movies, and My Netflix.
Netflix rolled out the new layout to a small group of customers.
But it was met with poor reviews, with most viewers saying Netflix already had the best layout among its peers.
“It sucks so bad. Why do people try fixing things that aren’t broken?,” one Reddit user wrote.
Another replied, saying: “Because people think they need to justify their salaries by changing things so they can go ‘I had an idea don’t fire me’.”
While a third person wrote: “There was nothing wrong with the old interface. It was easily the best among all streaming platforms.
“Now it looks like Max and I hate it. Switching profiles is now a chore.”
Now Netflix is nearly ready to roll it out to customers worldwide.
During an earnings call yesterday, Co-CEO Greg Peters said that it will arrive “later this year“.
It will be Netflix’s biggest update in a decade.
At the time of the initial rollout, Netflix exec Pat Flemming told Reuters that the redesign was hoped to make the platform easier to navigate with less “eye gymnastics”.
The company had reportedly been hawkish on improving engagement time – how long viewers actually spend on the platform.
Netflix was said to be making more effort to keep viewers on the app for longer, according to reports.
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.
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 frustrated feeling as your muscle memory trips 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.
But it’s 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.
