I'm wondering if anyone in charge at Netflix is going to wise up and realize that their biggest problem is their UI.

Years ago, if you asked a programmer why the Netflix UI worked the way it did, the answer was that it was designed to hide how small their catalog actually was. Then, Netflix became quite successful and their UI became an industry standard, with Amazon, Youtube, etc. all copying it or aspects of it. So why mess with success?

But now Netflix is in a situation where they have a dearth of new good content, but now they also have a fairly substantial catalog which has been built up over more than a decade. And they are still sticking with a UI designed to hide the size of their catalog. I often talk with friends and family who have Netflix and they are not aware of shows which they might like, simply because the Netflix algorithm hasn't shown it to them.

I suspect that making one simple UI change could have as much effect on their fortunes as adding $hundreds of millions of new content. Simply only display the icon for a given show once in any given session. In other words, if say "Rebel Moon" is shown under Sci-Fi movies, only show it there, not also under Action movies or some other row. They've already seen it once and clicked past, so showing it again is wasting a space for some other show they might like.

People are leaving Netflix because they click around for too long trying to find something they want to watch. The problem is perceived as lack of good new content, but the real problem might just be the clicking around.

They've also made it harder to go to content in that catalog. You used to be able to get to the sidebar relatively easily, even if you'd swiped right a dozen times, by just going up|down, then left. then you were at the menu and about 2 clicks away from search.

Now? Now the search bar is at the top. If you've scrolled down through categories while looking for something, then decided to just use search, or to just look in movies or shows, you now gotta scroll up & up & up.