I can’t believe I’m just now discovering the Netflix Community Blog, but I’m glad I did. It’s fascinating. This blog is particularly interesting, where the Netflix team is actually asking the community to help them name a button:
Let’s say there is a big button by their avatar image, and if you clicked it, you’d be able to keep an eye on them (but not in a creepy way). What’s the button say on it?
Are you Subscribing to this person? If you saw that would you understand what that meant? What about Bookmarking them? That’s often understood to mean ‘holding’ onto this page, although that misses the passive nature of this. You could be Adding them to your Favorites list. Like being a Friend, there could be another class — a Favorite. Is Adding a Favorite better than Subscribing? And then there is a simple Save this Reviewer.
Can any of you propose a label for this button that is immediately understandable, clearly describes what this activity is, and doesn’t require a paragraph explanation.
I have several gut reactions to this…part of me wants to think it’s cool, but most of me thinks, why can’t they figure this out themselves? Can’t they afford user research? It also makes the process seem so…trial and error. My guess is that most of their users don’t read this blog, and the ones that do are probably also designers and engineers - in which case it’s part free research and part free labor. And for some reason it seems inappropriate. Asking the community for feedback is one thing…asking them to help you name a button? Weird.
Well, at least we can all take advantage of the free ideas.
David Y
July 2nd, 2007
thanks for pointing out the netflix blog; it’s definitely pretty engaging reading. I think it’s genius for marketing+design reasons to ask for community input even on simple things like the naming of a button.
1) it gets the influential people involved - you’re right that it’s probably only designers reading it but I’ve seen lots of magazine articles, blog posts and awards about netflix design, so they must be hitting the right people.
2) I think ued will probably start snubbing me for saying this, but I think user interface design is 20% science, 70% art and 10% luck. our feelings about good design are so subliminally affected (our previous computer experience, our aptitude for art, our empathy for grandmothers who call and complain about y! products, how we’re feeling about our breakfast that morning…) that in asking the simplest questions we reveal the most about our prejudices towards certain design methods/patterns. the comments on the button name expose semantics around words like subscribe/friend/favorite that had never occurred to me.
too late to be writing coherently… but this is a great blog and I hope you keep it up! also, when are you going to put some ypn/adsense ads on sarahcpr so you can take your brilliant and exceedingly handsome engineering team out to lunch???
Joshua Porter
July 2nd, 2007
Great find!
Sarah
July 2nd, 2007
David - not sure about your percentages but you’re right about the feedback they’ve gotten on this post so far; the comments do reveal a lot of ways of looking at the problem that I wouldn’t have thought of. Maybe this is actually just the sort of question that designers should be asking of the community. I think what I’m reacting to is the “design by committee” nature of it. Sometimes it is good to get everyone’s opinion, but sometimes it turns your design into mud.
All about blogging » Blog Archive » Netflix is Designing with Community Input
July 17th, 2007
[...] The Netflix team has a blog: Netflix Community Blog (via Sarah)The blog is interesting for several reasons, most notably the candidness of the posts. In this post on Movie Privacy, for example, the team talks about a new feature whereby you can mark movies private, so as to not show them to your friends. Michael writes: “So, in a rather unNetflix-like way, we’re just going to release it to Friends users in the next week or so. Let’s see if this finally allows you to connect to folks you know slightly less well (or maybe too well), and for whom you absolutely needed the ability to hide some titles. We’ve all read your comments and suggestions for how best to implement this. Trust me: this isn’t that. It’s not that we’re not hearing your suggestions, it’s just i was interested in getting this in front of you quickly.” [...]