Designing for User Experience

I am all about designing with user experience in mind. I do not like to do publicity, but I like to give credit when credit is due.

I felt a huge amount of easiness and happiness with a recent experience watching a series I did not know of on Netflix. I am watching "Under the Dome" and this TV series is the type of a long story spread across several episodes. Usually in this situation, you watch one episode, go through the end credits, and then select next episode and watch it from the start.

Netflix has made experience simple by having the option to click to view next episode usually at the moment the end credits appear, so a one button experience. So far so good, looks awesome and is a cool feature.

I noticed that now Netflix starts the next episode at minute 1:06, so not at the very beginning.

But this time, watching this TV series, I noticed that when we have this one button experience, my previous experience was not really a one button experience. As the end credits come up, we click the button and move to the next episode, but then we do a slight fast forward through the summary of previous episodes. Netflix captured that user experience.

Now when we come to the end credits, our experience is better. We click the one button at the end credits, and Netflix jumps us to the next episode just after the summary of the previous episode. How awesome is that?

I really like this small things that make our life much better, so Netflix helps me save time (still taking into account the time I waste watching TV), and lets be honest, time is the most precious resource that you value dearly. So no longer I watch boring TV with a lot of commercials, but also take out the pieces that don't bring value to you.

And when I come back to the TV series the next day, as long as I am not watching the episodes in a row, Netflix places you at the very beginning of the episode and lets you see the summary of the previous episodes.

I love design for the user. That is a lot of what my work is about. That is probably why I appreciate this small detail from Netflix. next option could be like Youtube allows, have an increased speed option, at 1.10x or 1.20x you can watch a movie with basically the same type of experience.

Message to all architects and designers out there: design with the user experience in mind!

You can see more at the reason of one...

Disclaimer: The views, ideas and concepts here depicted and/or described are the sole responsibility of the author and are in no way related to or representing the companies for which the author works or has worked.