Netflix is synonymous with choice. Too much of it many would say.
Why this is relevant to the title is I’m creating a mashup of Netflix and the Paradox of Choice (an excellent book by Barry Schwartz). You can find links to his excellent book and Ted Talk at the bottom of this article.
What is the paradox of choice?
I’m going to paraphrase Schwartz’ Ted Talk here (and I really do recommend you watch it).
Essentially what Schwartz says is that when you’re given limited choice, you can blame the authority for limiting your choice. You’ll take what’s on offer but you’ll wonder if with more choice you could have made a better decision.
The problem when you’re given too much choice, is that you’re more likely to make a poor decision. You will blame yourself for that choice.
What this looks like in reality
We’ve all been there. Picture the scene, sound familiar?
- You’ve donned your PJs and made yourself comf on the sofa
- You grab the remote and hit the Netflix button
- The warm fuzzies of the “tudum” sound and the screen loads up
- The first thing on the screen autoplays a preview (essentially giving you the whole plot in a few seconds)
- You think, mmm maybe, then scroll to the next thing, you’ll come back to it
- The next thing you watch, mmm maybe, then scroll to the next thing…
- 45 minutes later, you’re still scrolling the options and you can’t even remember what the first thing was you saw
- Huh. what to watch, what to watch.
- You can’t decide so you pick something you’ve watched before but don’t feel like it’s working for you
- You’re back to the preview, scroll, preview
- Is there something better? are you missing out on a better choice? Is this your fault because you can’t choose?
This my friends is the paradox of choice.
You are blaming yourself for the choice you’ve made because with everything available you should be able to make a good decision.
Limiting TV choice
II’m Gen X, so I remember a time when you were stuck with what channels you had. At one point that was 3 channels, and trust me, the choice was pretty dire.
You watched TV within the following set of constraints
- Genre / Category
- Time (availability)
If there wasn’t something you wanted to watch you could watch a video or a DVD.
It was rare that you would make a choice and feel like you’d made a poor decision. If you did, you’d simply change the channel.
Perhaps you made a weekly visit to Blockbuster (or your local equivalent). You’d finish your week with the latest release or something so random it would bring you joy.
But when I compare that experience to the one with SO many choices, I’d rather go back to it most days.
The problem with Netflix
Netflix gives you so much choice, with some very quirky categorisation and a wall of options.
Using Netflix on a daily basis is the equivalent of going to Blockbuster every day of the week.
The cognitive load of effectively staring at wall upon wall of options.
It becomes a sensory overload of having to make that kind of decision every day.
Which plausibly puts people into two possible camps.
Those that spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to find something and giving up.
OR
Those that spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to find something, watching it for a short period of time then repeating the loop, or giving up.
In each scenario, the person is probably asking myself “am I missing out on something better by making this choice”.
This is genuinely not helping our attention spans.
Make it simple
I know Netflix has a lot of data that they use to create quirky categories and individualise the images used on their calls to action. This is WAY too late in the journey. You’ve already made me do all the hard work.
Going simple needs to happen from the moment the app is opened. To win people over, and I mean truly win them over, make them feel like you really know them.
So make the decision making process easier, reduce (or at least make the appearance of reduction) the amount of choice.
Here are a couple of ways they could do that.
First, design. Reduce the number of options on the screen. Create a hierarchy of options, like Disney+ or Apple do, and regularly refresh the options. They have more than enough data to be able to do this dynamically.
Second, use behavioural economics and machine learning to reduce the choice. Learn the behaviour of people who use the platform and make informed recommended choices. I think this is one of the rare occasions people would be happy with machine learning.
The point here is that Netflix are losing subscribers because they don’t appreciate that their customers don’t want to spend all night trying to decide what to watch. They have spent money on generating more content rather than generating a better experience in choice.
Links
As promised at the top, here are some links to other resources that I absolutely love relating to choice.
If you do nothing else, please watch Barry Schwartz’ Ted Talk, it’s one of the early ones and it’s absolutely brilliant.
Ted talks
Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice Ted Talk
Sheena Iyengar - The Art of Choosing Ted Talk
Books
Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice on Amazon | Bookshop.org
Sheena Iyengar - The Art of Choosing on Amazon | Bookshop.org
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow on Amazon | Bookshop.org
