The biggest update of Netflix interface in a decade: smarter, more personalized, embracing diverse content

Netflix announced its largest revamp of its user interface in a decade, not only a new look, but also adds more information about each show, and introduces smarter AI search tools that can understand vague concepts such as "ambient" and more flexible structures to better demonstrate the company's interest in emerging video games, live events, sports events and other new types of content.

To keep up with the trend, the new vertical video component on mobile will make it easier for fans to scroll through trailers and clips, watch the full show or share content with others. This is reminiscent of the infinitely scrolling and very successful short video site TikTok, one of Netflix's biggest competitors.

"We think it's time to take a big step forward," said Eunice Kim, chief product officer at Netflix. The new interface is "simpler, more intuitive, and better displays the various entertainment content available on the company's vast website."

"The current TV experience is designed for TV shows and movies. It's designed for the future," Kim said.

But Kim and CTO Elizabeth Stone said in a tech briefing that it is time for the interface to catch up with Netflix's changing lineup while making searches faster and smarter. The same key is to reduce the "eye gymnastics" that users must perform when scanning program information. A cleaner look, along with the additional relevant information displayed at a glance, should help simplify the decision-making process.

Kim said the new interface will be launched globally starting today.

Key shortcuts, such as the My Netflix tab (which contains reminders and Continue to watch tab), will now be displayed at the top of the screen, with a more eye-catching position.

Over the past year, the company has actively entered more live events and sports events. Around 65 million viewers around the world watched the boxing match between internet celebrity Jake Paul and aged former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. The influx of the game overwhelmed Netflix’s servers and caused complaints of failures and service disruptions.

The puzzle of Paul-Tyson streaming last fall was largely resolved a few weeks later, when Netflix successfully played two NFL regular season football games (or, admittedly, the number of viewers is not that high).

But the company is still continuing to increase its investment in live events that require different network architectures to handle peak demand. Additionally, live events often come from specific locations around the world, but must be able to reach every corner of the world where Netflix operates relatively quickly. These demands will only increase.

Earlier this year, the company began streaming WWE’s weekly show RAW, along with its crazi fan base, and continued to produce more live shows, such as Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, a revisionist weekly talk show. It also extended its partnership agreement with the NFL and is known to be focusing on other types of live events and sports events.

Kim said that to adapt to the shift to live sporting events and events, this means the interface needs a better reminder system, for example, allowing interested viewers to know when the event will begin or reach a critical moment.

"We need to let you know when to watch live games. We need better ways to highlight elements on the homepage. (The interface) needs to get you to watch or play the show at the right time."

The company also needs to adapt to the demands of video games, which have been slowly increasing investment in increasingly complex games that can be resource-intensive and attract audience attention more than many shows.

To further adapt to the demands of live shows, Stone said the company will add more peak demand features to its long-time distribution backbone, OpenConnect.

Helping viewers browse seemingly endless selection of programs and quickly find what they want to watch is a challenge for all streaming services, especially as content libraries grow and competition for viewers is becoming increasingly fierce. Netflix is ??often considered one of the best companies to provide its approximately 700 million users with the content they want.

The mobile interface has gained a new way of browsing content, sliding up the vertical feed, allowing people to browse clips and trailers. A new mobile feature called Moment will allow viewers to save, replay and share clips.

"All of these features are meant to get people to press the play button and stay," Kim said.

The new search capabilities will surpass the machine learning tools the company has been using for years. With these tools, the algorithm basically says that because someone likes a show, there are some other shows here, and other fans of the show also like it.

Stone said the company is exploring the use of generative AI and responsive search tools to introduce “more signals so we can better handle titles you might like.” “It will be easier to find what you want to see.”

Generative AI tools will be able to use "natural conversational phrases, such as 'I want something light and fun'" to provide options with this atmosphere. Stone said the recommendations would be highly personalized and used her own list of recommendations and Kim’s list of recommendations, as examples, to illustrate that two relatively similar professional women living in the Bay Area may have very different tastes.

Regarding their different show preferences, Stone said, “this isn’t exactly what you expect.” “We are all tech geeks who live in Silicon Valley.” But if search engines recommend the same show episode to both, “we end up getting frustrated and then go somewhere else.”

For the company's hundreds of millions of international audiences, AI will also generate personalized title information for more languages ??around the world.

In late April, the company introduced a subtitle option for viewers who chose to watch the show with original subtitles so that it only displays translations of spoken conversations, rather than versions of the sound effects, music prompts and other audio information contained in the subtitles of the deaf and hearing impaired (SDH). It first appeared in the release of the serial killer series You Season 5 and will be gradually applied to all Netflix originals.

A little surprising, Kim said that at least initially, the new interface will not be much different from the audience in its latest ad-supported base package compared to those in the more expensive ad-free package.

"We hope this will make members and advertisers excited about Netflix," Stone said.

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