This design looks so cheap to me, it’s just a bunch of random covers, there is no information about the movies presented in any way, the covers are way too big and take up an inordinate amount of space and there is nothing breaking up sections, design is just so fucking dumb now, fuck mobile
rant over 😅
And then combined it with thumbnails that change all the time because of A/B testing, which makes things even harder to recognize at a glance.
Which app is this?
The large cover design isn’t even the worst bit, it’s how hard it is to find concrete genre categories in a lot of these streaming apps. You’d have a bunch of overlapping categories like most popular whatever in whereever and so on, they quite literally hide the option to just go to movies -> genre -> list everything in some apps (Netflix was hard to find at some point).
Now I just pirate whatever old movies come to mind and stuff them in Jellyfin. Right now it’s Minority Report. Up next… Hmm I downloaded man from U.N.C.L.E the other day, might watch that.
Minority Report might feel a bit dated these days because so many stories have borrowed from it by now, but in its day, it was awesome. Must have watched it 20 times. Watch it, watch all the things you can based on stories by Philip K Dick, read his work and enjoy his mind.
I dont want Tom Cruise to get a single penny from me or my recommendations, but that movie is awesome!
Person of Interest is a whole TV show around a similar concept I guess (precog vs whatever the computer was called in PoI).
Anyway, I started downloads on a couple of other adaptations of his stories, total recall (the newer one because I’m more of a Colin Farrell fan these days than a Schwarzenegger fan, not that I dislike the latter or anything) and the adjustment bureau.
Been a while since I’ve seen either Blade Runner movie, not sure if I’ve seen them both or not, so those are also in the queue now. Thanks for the suggestion, I’d never actually heard of him before my current rewatch of Minority Report (I’d seen it before, just didn’t know about the original author of the story).
Really not seeing the issue here lol. Every single poster has the movie name on it in big legible text, and is either an official cover for the movie or official art of a main character with the official movie name text over it.
What exactly would you prefer?
It nothing to do with the posters, it’s the design and navigability of the web site, and the fact that every web site looks like the same uninspired piece of generic garbage, when design used to be important
You only showed one website though?
I don’t know what you want them to look like? They’re displaying posters of movies and shows that they have, in different lists and orders. How else would you like them displayed?
They all look like this, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Pluto, Hulu. If you can’t see the problem then I don’t know what to say, there is no design at all to the page it is just some movie posters on a page. It is boring and lazy and lacks any artistic skill or panache whatsoever. It’s just another way they are making the web into boring unimaginative shits as they are
It’s all about driving metrics now. If people need to click on/select a movie to see more about it then that adds numbers to page views and increases time spent in the app. They can also see who and how many do or don’t watch a movie after clicking on it to further drive their algorithms.
Yeah that makes since, they don’t even have the mouse over information anymore you gotta click thru
UI’s for movie streaming services are not designed to help you find something to watch. They are designed to keep you “engaged”, which means in the platform and not realizing that the pool of actually interesting things is about as deep as a puddle. Everything about streaming sites’ design is user hostile and this is a classic example of that.
Yeah I suppose, you just gotta pick one thing and then it does the rest, or that’s what they want probs
Isn’t Jellyfin the same design as all the streaming platform and they have nothing to gain for keeping you engaged?
Almost, but it has movie titles under the poster/cover and usually pulls the actual movie covers.
Once you click into it, it gives a shitton of detail about the movie.
Once you click into it, it gives a shitton of detail about the movie.
Is this not the case with netflix/hbo? Sorry i never actually used any streaming service before other than Jellyfin so i don’t understand what is the issue here
Two things off the top of my head:
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Jellyfin displays ratings from RT (and opencritic maybe?), while Netflix has stopped displaying their own user ratings years ago.
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Jellyfin displays the full cast and crew. When you click an actor, director,… it shows you other media where they appear, even individual episodes. Netflix has none of that.
Ohh, okay, that’s actually horrible.
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So does Netflix etc……
Yeah but they don’t have highly paid UX design teams, so they’re probably just copying design choices on the basis that they’re trying to offer people a similar experience they can own.
Also, it’s FOSS so you can always make your own skin/theme.
That’s bullshit. These are basic design principles they teach in every single design school in the world. You don’t need “highly paid design teams” you just need someone with some education.
And this design philosophy has apparently invaded every single corporation on Planet Earth, so I really have no fucking idea where designers are even employed lately.
And this design philosophy has apparently invaded every single corporation on Planet Earth, so I really have no fucking idea where designers are even employed lately.
That’s because they employ you and then force you to do bullshit things
I bought ice trays recently that had no way to stack, and literally shattered the second time I tried removing ice. Ice trays. ICE. FUCKING. TRAYS. WEVE HAD ICE TRAYS FOR LIKE 100 GODDAMN YEARS. WHY ARE WE STILL STRUGGLING WITH DESIGNING ICE TRAYS???
We await your contributions to the project (you won’t ever contribute)
Jellyfin has like six different view types to pick from, including one that doesn’t even show images. And almost all the others show the title always visible below the preview image.
Jellyfin a) only has the content you feed it, so you already have some knowledge about it and b) you can expand it with plugins and make the design however you like it.
Doesn’t piss me off as much as media players that show you what happens in the next episode as it’s loading
It’s the Windows 8 Metro UI.
Metro UI included titles (inside the tile), so it very much isn’t. It may be inspired, but it’s like “let’s take elements of the design and make it worse”
I didn’t look at all the comments, but this is intentional. One of the streaming platforms (probably Netflix or Amazon) originally made an algorithm that tailors posters to the individual. It’s the usual A/B testing psychological bullshit designed to maximize your likelihood of watching a movie.
My wife watched The Get Down and another series I think it was called “Woke” (two series with predominantly black cast) back to back in the same weekend and the Netflix algorithm started to put the black character of every show as the center piece on every picture. Like we already watched house of card, we know that the black lobbyist guy is barely a support character, don’t try to fool us putting him in the center of the poster
I’m so happy I don’t have Netflix… That sounds extreamly manipulative. Interesting to know they do this but not surprising since it’s Netflix.
One of the reasons I dropped Netflix was because they kept changing the pictures on shit so I’d think there was new content only to see id already watched it when I clicked on it. That got old quick. Don’t have that issue when I just pirate shit.
Exactly. User hostile methods like this are a deal breaker.
Click on a cover to get more info.
Honestly it feels a bit like browsing a shelf of books or DvD boxes or something. It certainly could have some improvements but I don’t think this is that bad.
I dont mind the Top 10 Carousel, but it would be nice if it has a Title and a Rating under it.
A lot of the “For You” algorithm stuff is fine, but I would prefer to have that in a Table. Title, Synopsis, Rating, length, Director, Cast. so if it sounds interesting, I can click through, but I am not going back and forth constantly.
Also gimmie a bit list I can sort. You can even have things like Movie Posters show when hovering over the name.
They don’t want to show you ratings, because that will make it obvious how shit their catalog is.
A big part of it is keeping you on the site, engaged. It’s best if you are watching a movie, but browsing around is good, too. At least they aren’t on a competitor’s site.
I mean, if they could let you click on the picture and it “flips” over and then there’s some info and a few stills from the movie… This was how Video Rental stores worked for years.
This along with the changes to de-emphasize things like watch lists or even “continue watching” is basically the providers seeing how much they can influence users to watch what the provider wants instead of trying to cater to the users. If they find that people rarely navigate away from whatever ‘top 10’ or ‘for you’ suggestions, well, that means they have a great deal of freedom to only provide what is convenient for them and still get most of their revenue.
Unpopular opinion: I want as little information as possible before watching a movie. At the other end of the spectrum, we have trailers which basically spoil the whole film. The only information I want about a movie is whether it’s interesting, which I will get from audience sentiment online, and the only information I really need is the title.
Any additional information is either irrelevant to the movie experience, or a spoiler. Yeah I’m a weird little freak, and I like low-information posters. It’s better than posters which give away too much
Yeah ok, but at least give me a name. For example, the suggestions of GOG doing the same, some don’t have a name in the logo pic.
…everyone of those tells you the name of the movie.
Which movie poster in OP doesn’t have the name spelled out in big ol’ plain English on it?
“Don’t tell me anything about it.”
searches the Metacritic score
And make sure everything you mouseover trying to get a blurb or something instead just jumps around like a Jack Russell terrier trying to grab your attention. I fucking hate having to find a place to park my mouse so it isn’t autoplaying some bullshit I have no interest in.
Or worse finding a space where something doesn’t auto play but scroll does work (when on a computer.)
Social media told me gradeschoolers can’t read now. I guess they don’t want all those nonsense symbols everywhere.
