Amazon Prime Video’s Library Is Now Genuinely Impossible to Browse

I think there are at least two categories. One is bad because its minimalist in some sense, like HN and Craigslist. The other is bad because it's optimized to push you to do something, not for your enjoyment. Design choices that make you buy more or watch whatever are being pushed are not the same as those that maximize usability. It's not all evil, I think there needs to be some way to get people out of their rut and experience new things. But most successful site are in full exploitation mode and optimized to take your money or attention, not to allow you to use them more easily.

I think it's just a case of being first is what matters for network effects. I forget who said it, but someone made the wise observation that beating an incumbent requires you to be not 2x or 3x better but 10x better.

This seems to show up at a lot of companies. There's more money in dominating a new or emerging market than in improving the quality where you are already #1, because customers probably put up with your bullshit.

>Even here on HN, abysmal layout and lack of features but successful forum.

Strong disagree. HN layout is not abysmal but optimised for simplicity above anything. It's not looking for attention, so i think it's very good at what it does.

  >Does bad UI make more money?

You may have a point there.

Netflix has got to be the absolute nadir of bad UI design: horizontal scrolling as a feature, majority of content hidden, some content which reveals itself on rollover --other content which has to be clicked on, autoplaying videos on hover, elements which push other elements aside if you accidentally mouse over them, etc. etc. It's almost like someone decided to deliberately combine every element of bad user interface design into one atrocious lump of crap.

And what makes it worse is that, not only is Netflix hugely successful, but everyone else now is copying their fuck-awful design, seemingly in the mistaken belief that it's a "winner". Amazon Prime has similar [lack of] usability and the BBC has also crippled their iPlayer interface, of late, by changing it to ape Netflix.

And, if we're talking bad UI design in general. You'd also have to go a long way to beat eBay. In addition to various interface 'quirks' which seem designed to deliberately annoy the user, their site reminds me of V'Ger in the Star Trek film [0]. It seems to be an accretion consisting of various mis-matched elements, many dating back to more primitive times.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture

I remember using amazon for the first time ~15 years ago or so, and I was shocked at how bad the search was. I couldn't believe this was the top shopping site on the web..