DUBAI: Streaming giant Netflix will begin rolling out a major revamp of its TV app’s homepage next week.
The new design “is simpler, more intuitive, and better represents the breadth of entertainment on Netflix today,” the company’s chief product officer, Eunice Kim, said on Tuesday.
It includes a navigation bar at the top of the screen, rather than the current position on the left, and more-responsive recommendations while a user browses the app.
Netflix’s chief technology officer Elizabeth Stone said that in making these recommendations the service “will pull in more signals,” such as search history and the trailers watched by a user.
“And because everything will happen seamlessly in the background, you won’t even notice it happening — it will just be magically easier to find something to watch,” she added.
The overall design will be more minimalist and cleaner, providing all the relevant information about a title in one place so as to reduce “eye gymnastics” and help users make an “informed choice,” Kim said.
The mobile app is also getting an overhaul, as Netflix tests the use of the favored video format on social media: vertical viewing. The vertical feed will feature clips from movies and TV shows that users can browse and then click on to visit to a title’s home page.
Netflix has previously used artificial intelligence technology across the platform for features such as recommendations but now, with advances in generative AI, it aims to go a step further by showcasing titles in more languages and including chatbot-like functionality.
For example, viewers can use conversational phrases such as “I want to watch something scary but not too scary” to search for content.
“Believe it or not, that search phrase will actually yield results in the new experience,” said Stone.
The company is also investing further in its content-delivery network, Open Connect, which optimizes streaming globally across differing internet speeds.
“Open Connect has given us a really strong foundation and now we’re building on that foundation as we deliver a broader and more complex variety of entertainment, including live events and games on TV,” Stone said.
“Entertaining the world is hard but technology makes it easier.”
