Amazon Outdoes Netflix in UX With the Fire TV
Phyllis Zimbler Miller, M.B.A.
Author, filmmaker, playwright, podcaster; founder of free nonfiction Holocaust theater project THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE; co-host of podcast NEVER AGAIN IS NOW about antisemitism; Wharton MBA
For people who stream TV shows and movies via Netflix on their TV screens, there is the constant annoyance of searching for a program with the TV remote.
Sure, Netflix algorithms try to anticipate what viewers want, but these algorithms are often incorrect. Thus time and frustration are spent on scrolling and clicking one letter at a time on an alphabet grid.
I have often wondered why Netflix doesn’t do something about this.
Guess what? Amazon beat Netflix to the punch.
Jeff Bezos has announced Amazon’s Fire TV – “a tiny box that plugs into your HDTV” and “has voice search that actually works.”
Yes, that is an innovation that makes people think “Why didn’t Netflix introduce this long ago?” After all, voice activated computers exist. What was the holdup in Netflix’s UX – user experience – engineering?
Bottom line? I just listened to a presentation about UX – and a speaker made the point that everyone in a company has to be committed to constantly improving the user experience. If not, the user experience may get overlooked.
Netflix is facing more and more competition. Wouldn’t it have been smart not to allow Amazon to innovate first on this important aspect of the user experience?
As I have said before, Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. All companies need to keep their eyes trained on which territory this gorilla will invade next.
Design Director at Blink | Principal UX Designer | UX & Product Design Strategist
10yNot sure if I agree. Not only is the voice search limited to Amazon's own content, it is also hit or miss and seems to have trouble with complex names. The reason Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu push their users to Browse rather than Search is because they all have limited catalogs of content, and users are more likely to be disappointed by doing a search because the content they are searching for might not be in the results. It's also worth mentioning that the Fire TV's selling point - avoiding the clunky hunt-and-peck alphabetical input - isn't actually solved. You still have to use this type of interface elsewhere within the device's menus where text input is needed (including your first run experience when you have to enter your wifi password and any time you want to search for a new app). Ars Technica also points out that it's actually less consistent on the Fire TV because for some reason they have implemented 3 different types of these keyboards (an alphabetical grid, a QWERTY grid, and a linear alphabetical row).