Netflix Induced Anxiety — A UI Rant

Binging ‘Stranger Things’ with a side of stress.

A while back, a classmate of mine wrote an article about Hulu’s interesting user experience design choices. She spoke of things like their bold color choices on the home screen, their vertical design, and other frustrations regarding the interface. In the spirit of her article, I’d like to shift the focus onto Netflix for a moment.

I’m not sure how others view Netflix, but for me, it’s to decompress. Especially now that I’m in grad school, and my stress levels can be off the charts some days. In the rare moments when I do have time to watch something, I will admit that I actually enjoy browsing for something to watch. Seeing all of my options and discovering new shows is enjoyable to me — even when I spend too long doing that and don’t actually end up watching something.

Not too long ago, Netflix decided to make changes to their UI design. They implemented an autoplay feature, so when you hover over a show, even shortly, the trailer begins to play with no warning. To be fair, I can imagine the hypothesis. People who are stopped on a show thumbnail and reading the description are interested in the show. So why wouldn’t you help them out by just playing the trailer automatically?

Let’s take a step back and remember the days when websites could autoplay music in the background when the page loaded. Even I uploaded playlists to my site so my friends could hear the cool music I was into. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t look back on that phase fondly. It felt abrasive and annoying to have to try and find the pause button, or worse yet, guess which tab the noise was coming from.

Which is why I find Netflix’s decision to start autoplaying movie and TV trailers surprising. My first thought was, oh this is nice — and I enjoyed getting to see a preview. This quickly turned into annoyance when I realized that this happened to every single show I paused on. Even when I wasn’t actually interested in the show, I was just trying to skim Instagram or chat with my friend about what to watch — a trailer would immediately play and I’d have to either pretend to quickly flicker through the options, or leave Netflix entirely, to get any peace and quiet.

After more time with this feature, it’s really just transitioned into anxiety. Browsing for shows is now stressful and I feel rushed to make a decision. As a result, I find myself avoiding Netflix entirely because I don’t need that kind of extra stress in my life. I’m not really sure that’s the desired effect of their design changes, but I know I’m not alone based on some similar frustrations from reddit viewers.

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I thought I could end this rant with a solution for others frustrated by this — but unfortunately, Netflix hasn’t provided an option to disable this auto-preview feature. Another example of what not to do. It does feel like they made a UI decision without considering exactly what their users are doing while they browse for shows. So for now, the mute button is probably your best solve. Or you’ll just have to turn to other streaming channels (like me) and hope that soon, it will be safe to return to Netflix.