October | 2013 | Seana's blog

I watch Netflix often and absolutely hate the browsing “feature” on the homepage. It seems they are trying to recreate the video store atmosphere, and while I miss the video store for its browsing specifically, the Netflix experience is slow, clunky, and honestly hurts my eyes.

When you hover over the left or right arrows the images slowly scroll which is laborious. There seems to be no way to make them scroll quickly. Also, the choices they have will sometimes seem random. Many times, they will have the same movies in different categories which is not helpful.

This option should be available for all the genres

If you click “My List,” which is the first section on the Netflix homepage, it takes you to a list of everything on your Instant Queue. This is much faster to navigate; you can scroll up and down and see your complete list instead of slowly scrolling right or left. It would be very helpful if they had this available for all of the genres.

instantwatcher.com

Also, I tend to use a 3rd party website, instantwatcher.com which has all of the Netflix content listed and is specifically for browsing Netflix titles. There was a need for this website because the Netflix browsing experience is so bad.

Netflix doesn’t even have to design a new experience because someone else has already done it for them. Granted, they could polish the instantwatcher design, but having this list view as an option would be extremely helpful. Also, instantwatcher’s “New & Noteworthy” section is especially helpful. It is much better than Netflix’s “New Arrivals” because I have actually heard of the titles and they may be something I would like to watch. All of their genres are at the top, which are easy to find and clear to read. Netflix has so much content that it can be daunting. A better browsing experience would really help users take advantage of all of the amazing content they have.

Jason Guerra, born on tax day, is a photography student at Seattle Central. What stood out to me was his undeniable enthusiasm and commitment to this program which he has been planning on attending for 3 years.

Jason grew up in Seattle and upon graduation up and left to go traveling with money that he saved up. He meandered around the country and visited places like Florida, the Dakotas, Chicago, and New Mexico. He snapped photos with disposable cameras the whole time of anything and everything, including New Mexico landscapes from the Greyhound bus to the Colorado fires. In fact, he almost exclusively shot with disposable cameras and a polaroid camera until four years ago, when he actually bought a camera.

After his return, he became involved in the Seattle BMX scene and photographed his friends riding rails and stairs. Some of the BMX parks have cool, ominous names such as “the dungeon” and “the wooden whale.” His friends recognized his talents and urged him to consider photography more seriously. So, he did.

His dream job would include traveling around he world. As for what he would like to photograph, he is open to different paths. He is excited about learning in-studio table-top product photography and in the field photography.

Month: October 2013

UX Redesign

Interview with Jason Guerra

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