Netflix — A design thinking approach

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An analysis to leverage design thinking approaches

In the past few years, we have witnessed how the streaming platforms can completely revolutionize how people look at the entertainment industry altogether. Before the advent of streaming platforms, people used to go to theatres, rent out movies via DVD’s, VHS tapes. But those days are long gone, started as a simple DVD rental company, Now Netflix has become a giant in the entertainment industry who nobody wants to mess with. A recent survey has stated that people forgot when was their last time going to a theatre. Netflix is adding nearly 13–18% of new subscribers every year. Netflix is now a 150M+ user streaming entertainment industry by itself. No wonder it has gained all the fame because of the quality it has provided over the past 13 years. Netflix has spent 15B dollars on its contents in the year 2019. In short, Netflix has disrupted the whole cable and TV programming model.

A business can never sustain without listening to constructive feedback from its customers. Similarly, Netflix also has received many suggestions and features to be incorporated into it. No task is simple, Similarly to listen and address all queries is nearly impossible, So as a binge-watcher I took the liberty to design empathize, ideate and prototype few issues.

Content Searching vs Content Watching

Searching content to watch can be a really painful task. If you agree with me then you are not alone, 20% of users activity goes just for searching. Doesn’t this number look convincing? OKAY As of 2015–16, ~83 minutes is the average daily user activity. Out of which ~20 minutes is spent on searching, which adds up to ~126 hours per year per user. So as of 2019 with ~150M users the same search activity spikes to ~19,945,800,000 hours per year.

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So why not ideate a design to incorporate a random movie generator into Netflix. Although there are different third-party applications that provide suggestions, I feel that will not match an in-house feature.

Feature 1: Surprise Me

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Bring back Peer-to-Peer Rating

I believe Netflix has stopped the Peer-to-Peer rating feature which I feel to be a very good feature. This can prevent many users from watching badly reviewed content.

Feature 2: Rating System

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PS: The image is just for illustration purposes. Nobody gives Sherlock 3 star rating. #SHERLOCKED

For the love of Trial Periods ❤

One-stop solution for free trial period members out there. Are you tired of automatic renewal when Netflix’s trial month is over? Or You would like to take a break from Binge-watching the upcoming month and need to be alerted about the billing? Sadly currently there is no option for you to be notified about the billings.

Feature 3: Auto-Renewal Alert Setup

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I don’t think this might create a dent in the $20.15B (Pun intended). But I feel giving user’s more freedom makes a product more trustworthy.

“Are you still watching?”

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This one phrase has agitated a huge number of binge-watchers over the years. There are many hacks to stop this from happening but personally I prefer not to hack a product and make it work for my ease.

Feature 4: Alternate the buzzkill phrase

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So here are some of the phrases which are supposedly targeted to care about Binge watchers rather than annoying them.

Cheers!


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