There are so many video streaming services available that you may not know which one to pick!

Fortunately Amazon Prime Video comes with your prime membership, so you truly get a good bang for your buck. If you haven’t experienced the joys of shopping on Amazon with a Prime Membership with free 2 day shipping… well you should most definitely try it.

With an Amazon Prime Membership, you get access to LOTS of content on Prime Video. It’s a Win-Win-Win, that also happens to come with some cool technology.

Cool Technology with Amazon Prime Video

It’s no wonder that a company that utilizes lean UX and deploys new code every 11.6 seconds has some cool technology (read about that and learn a lot more with the book Lean UX).

With all new technology and platforms that want to sell you things, there always seems to be a trade off from a good User Experience. Let’s uncover the cool technology first before providing our recommendation of an improvement to their UX.

Amazon Putting IMDB Out of Business

How many times have you watched a show and thought, “I know I’ve seen that actor in something else… what was it again? It’s on the tip of my tongue but I can’t think of it!” Then you cave and decide to look them up on IMDB.

But in order to look up an actor on IMDB, you have to figure out the season and episode you are watching. Pause the show. Find the season and episode number. Pull up IMDB, navigate to the show, find the season, find the show number, then scroll down to find the actor. And of course if it’s not the main actor then you have to scroll till you see what looks like them, remember their character name, and then confirm it’s actually the actor in question.

Wow, quite a bit of work just to find out the name of an actor and see their relevant work…

And if you’re lucky, you won’t get any spoiler alerts. Well we got decked with a spoiler the other day. While watching a comedy not on Prime Video, we wanted to look up some characters, so we paused the show to pull up IMDB, and SPOILER - we saw that two of the characters get married in a later episode. If Hulu had this cool Prime Video technology, we would not have had the show ruined due to that spoiler.

Anyway, on to this cool technology.

While watching content on Prime Video, whether on computer or Smart TV, just move the mouse or click an up/down arrow and guess what you’ll see? You’ll see a list of the actors that are in THAT scene!

Honestly, this is pretty incredible. This is taking a User Experience to the next level. Not only can you stay within your content to find out who the actor is, but it provides you the actors in that scene. You don’t even have to scroll through a whole list of all the actors in that episode. Wow! That is surely next level.

On the business front, Amazon shows you other content that actor is in that is also available on Amazon. Very smart on their part. It shows the most popular content first, such as IMDB, but this allows users to stay within the Amazon ecosystem which increases their views and purchases on content. Wicked smart!

Amazon Screengrab Technology

If you noticed above, the background of our screengrab is black. The actual content was not black. This was not a shot of the night sky. There were clearly characters in the video, but Amazon made the content black when taking a screengrab.

Blacking out content may not be great for certain users wishing to record the videos and distribute them illegally, but overall you have to admit that the tech is pretty cool. Amazon is all like, “trying to screengrab our content? Not today, junior!”

While you may wish to have that content for free via illegal means, pirating is worse for you and everyone around. If everyone pirated and no one paid for their content, then we’d have less good content to watch. Why would people want to make good content if they don’t get paid for it? So for that, we can thank Amazon for helping keep the content market alive.

A User Experience Problem

Overall, Prime Video is great. It has definitely come a long way since first introduced. The User Experience of navigating shows and content has gotten much better.

However, some issues still exist with the UX. Our biggest gripe comes with wanting to watch content that we paid for… because we bought it and probably want to watch it.

Take a look at the screengrab below of Prime Video. Where do your eyes go?

First, our eyes automatically go to the Hero content of Father's Day movies. Second, our eyes naturally go to the menu bar directly below. The gray background with the white / light gray font pops out at you, especially since it’s placed below the main content bar. A purely natural flow downwards to the menu, just as it was designed to do.

Then it seems you should click on “Your Videos” to see a list of the videos you purchased on Prime Video. ERRR - LOUD BUZZER NOISE - WRONG.

The “Your Videos” section shows you videos that are recommended for you to continue watching or to watch next. That all well and good, but… where are the videos I purchased?

To access videos you purchased, you have to go above the Hero content to the white bar with black text to the link that says “Your Video Library.” Really? Ok…

So to be clear: “Your Videos” are not really your videos. They are Videos to continue watching and videos that are recommended for you. “Your Video Library” is not a library of content to continue watching, it is a library of videos you purchased… word.

The U/X Solution

In “Your Videos” under the “Watch Next” selections, have “Your Video Library” with purchases made through Amazon. If users have not purchased videos, then keep “Your Videos” how it is now bye excluding “Your Video Library” and continuing with “prime Recommended TV” after “Watch Next.”

Separating out videos you purchased from the “Your Videos” page is confusing. While it is listed clear as day in “Your Video Library”, the eye is not naturally drawn to that spot. Confusion reigns when you are looking for videos you purchased, go to “Your Videos,” and are not shown videos you purchased. It’s not fun to think, “did Amazon delete my purchases?!”

Conclusion

Amazon Prime Video implements very cool technology that enhances the User Experience. It also makes pirating content more difficult by blacking out content that is screengrabbed. If more people have to pay to watch the content, then production companies get more money. If production companies have more money, they’ll spend more to make good content for us to enjoy in the future.

Pirating = less money for produced content = less good content in the future.

As with any product, the User Experience can be enhanced. Placing videos that users purchased on Prime Video in the “Your Videos” section will help alleviate confusion while also streamlining the User Experience. Afterall, users will probably want to watch content that they purchased again. Making it difficult to find can break trust with the brand and increase frustration, which may decrease customer loyalty. There are a number of platforms to purchase content. Keep your users you have by making the platform easy to use.

Interested in having Wexford constructively critique your products & services to help you build a better User Experience? We’d love to help! Schedule a Free Consultation today.

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