Back At It, Netflix-Style

Now that I've got my degree nailed down, I'm finding myself with a lot of free time (in between reading job boards and writing cover letters, of course). So, I think maybe now is the time to return to this sadly-abandoned class blog and make it not a class blog anymore. And what better topic with which to kick it off than Netflix? Obviously.

Full disclosure to start: Just like dancepunk and seafood, I was a late, late Netflix adopter. In fact, I didn't subscribe until a month or so ago because I really don't watch that many movies, and I didn't think it would be worth the money to get one or two DVD's a month. So as you can imagine, it took me about one day to become a total convert and queue up my first 50 -- and it's definitely changed my entertainment habits, since I'm now watching two or three movies a week instead of zero.

But the reason I'm writing about Netflix here isn't to tell you how excited I am to access every movie Dolph Lundgren ever made. The interaction design of the Netflix website makes it an absolute pleasure to use, and I want to highlight some of the behaviors that, in my opinion, make the user experience so enjoyable.

The first great thing about it is the "back-of-box" feature, where mousing over a movie gets you a pop up preview with synopsis, average ratings, and details like genre, actors and director. The best thing about this feature, though, is that it's universal; anywhere a movie is referenced on the site (by image, text link, or in your queue) you can hover and get this popup. It's a great feature that really helps users explore new movies, and its consistency is very comforting.

The next thing I love is the queue handling. When I started Netflix I figured I'd have maybe five or six movies in my queue at once... man, talk about underestimation. Turns out that since you can queue any movie that you might like to see someday, the numbers add up fast (I weigh in on the low side; right now I have 70 and my three netflix-friends have 126, 291 and 563 [!]). As a result, the queue handling interface needs to be intuitive and scalable, which is accomplished by providing multiple ways to move movies around the queue.

First, you can do a very 2.0 drag-and-drop (it'll even scroll for you if needed), which helps the page feel more responsive and engaging. There's also an option to edit the ordinal position of any queue item, which seems awkward but could be a useful shortcut for moving films to second on the list or something. Finally, there's a "Move to Top" shortcut for each movie, which is great because it lets you quickly promote whatever you want to watch next while scanning your queue. My only quarrel is that there's no way to quickly remove a single item -- instead, each movie has a checkbox for "Remove" and then an "Update" button at the bottom of the queue to commit all your removals. Since everything else in the queue interface is pleasantly real-time, I think removal should be as well.

Finally, I like the way Netflix handles ratings. Anywhere you see at a movie description, you can quickly rate it 1 to 5 stars (or change your previous rating), whether you've rented it or not. The more movies a user rates, the better their recommendations will be, and the ubiquity and reversability of the process make populating the recommender profile something that happens naturally alongside the user's normal browsing goals.

Although these behavioral elements make Netflix fun to use, I also love the way it handles recommendations and social connections, so stay tuned for another post soon on those elements of the site...