Instant watch only vs site design

[MachZero]

I noticed with instant watch the site design is different that when you have disc only or have both disc and IW. As long as the ability to get discs in involved the site design remains the same. But when you go instant only the design changes dramatically. There is a floating header bar. And on title details pages the box are is made huge, director cast etc details are shoved in a list on the right side and user reviews on the left. Not only that but then practically every user review you have to click a read more thing to reveal the rest of almost every review one at a time. And the rating each reviewer gave is to the left of the review and the feedback buttons for the review on the right of the review. Seems to me to be a bad design. So much wasted screen real estate with both the review ratings hanging out there on the left and the director cast etc stuff listed on the right. The design when discs are included in the plan is better.

Also it would be nice that even though one has instant only that we can still access and and remove stuff from our disc queue. This could be made a user configured option for those of us who want to switch occasionally to one disc only to see those occasional things only on disc for shows or a movie or two and then switch back right after so we can continue to manage the disc queue without having to switch just to manage the queue and then switch right back when simply wanting to manage the queue.

And lastly the header bar change to put taste profile in place of recommended for you is a bad move. Why not make it in the drop down when moused over when it was recommended for you item. As if I recall correctly that item was a drop down that allowed you to go to your ratings list and one or two other things. Now I don't even know where to look to find the recommended titles. Even though it is populated with a ton of stuff already in both of my queues it is still a nice reference tool for finding other stuff to watch when there is room to add more to the queues.

[MachZero]

Well put Knaldskalle. For as long as there has been a GUI developers have striven for well designed (aka intuitive). And this is because you are right in saying that such a design makes it real simple for users to use because it feels natural to use and things are where they would expect or are logical to find them. Advanced users suddenly having to google search on where to find or how to do something on a site is a reverse of that. And recent changes to where to find stuff on their site has resulted in that. But that's only half of good (intuitive) design. The other half I won't repeat since it was already detailed in my post. Constant removal of, relocation of, and drastic alterations of features only frustrates users as they have to relearn the site and seek replacement of in the case of removed features.

[Spindaddydad]

I guess there's a certain level of user expectation and intuition involved as well. When I visit the site, I perform a search, add the movie to my queue or watch it right away, rate some I've watched previously, then I leave the site when done. It works perfectly EVERY time and I know where everything is. I haven't expected it to do much more than that for many years now... basically, since Droid left the company. Even before that I never used the Netflix site as a place for movie research. Expecting it to do much more than that is pissing in the wind.

[MachZero]

True mainly this is what everyone who uses the netflix website does with little other activity. Which is why they removed the friends feature, at least we are told it was because of that. I know I only used it once every 2-3 weeks for curiosity of others I had met through netflix had watched etc. The recommendations page I use about once a month to see if there is anything that stands out to see. I enjoy discovering new movies I would like that I had never heard of before. One of the reasons I got netflix. Oh since speaking of the search feature, that could use some magic from search engine developers (maybe from google) so that when searching you actually get what your looking for instead of a page or two filled with relevant titles. I'm assuming it is still a problem. The last 5 times I tried to search for somewhat obscure titles that turns out they have on disc or instant watch searching for them didn't return the titles in the search for them. Someone else took the liberty of using google or something to find out they had the titles when I had inquired about where I could find them to watch.

[Janes'_kid]

It seems we have reached the point where a mention of platform and device are absolutely necessary before any discussion makes sense. Are you using an old Dell with an HDML connection to a 72" screen are using a new smart phone or something in between?

[MachZero]

As far as I'm aware what their website looks like is the same regardless of browser or platform you are viewing the website with. Apps on the other hand are a different story completely and in fact a number of them are far superior to anything netflix has ever done. If it weren't for the fact that there is a problem with TV shows resetting to an arbitrary predetermine portion of the bottom of the queue every time a 3rd party app or site pulls info from your account I'd use them over the netflix site. The API developers insist that they have fixed the problem. And I keep saying to them: then why am I still having the problem no matter what we do with my queue. They even had me clear my whole queue and add everything back again 24 hours later to give the system enough time to clear any data related to the previous queue items and order. But anyways at least with 3rd party stuff I can still view my disc queue but can't add anything since an error is returned if you are instant watch only. It appears, as strange as it is, that with some apps you can remove stuff from the disc queue while instant only.