Nettle: One User's Experience

Separated at Birth?

On top is the navbar on the homepage of Lindows.com. On the bottom is the navbar from Apple.com. (In case you couldn't tell.)

O'Reilly

Recently Tim O'Reilly solicited stories from users who'd "switched" from some other desktop operating environment to Mac OS X. I wrote to Tim telling him how earlier this year I'd switched in a major way to Mac OS X (everything except email -- still unable to migrate my Windows Eudora mailboxes over successfully). Tim included my story in his latest blog entry at MacDevcenter.

(Perhaps nettle should do a story on the trials and tribulations of "switching" to Mac OS X. It's really about moving one's "digital life" from one platform to another. One hopes one can move everything and not be left with 90% on one platform and 10% on another. However, right now, that's where I am.)

Busy

You probably noticed nettle was quiet yesterday. It may be quiet today too. Have some other business to attend to. But fear not -- Netflix Part 6 is on its way.

nettle on Netflix, part 5

by Brian L. Dear

Even More on Ratings

Neil from Netflix responds:

I agree with the discussion in your matrix. How would you like it to work? I take it you've seen this gadget (on the Genre pages...) My fear with offering an "own" button is that the confusion factor and the space dedicated go up, and the real value added is quite small. I'm not sure many people rate hundreds of movies that they want to watch again on video. I think the more usual pattern is either big-screen or video, unless its something truly special, in which case you can probably remember to rent it... We did experiment with yet another dimension of saw/didn't-see. Some customers were reluctant to rate low stars to a movie they hadn't seen but knew they wouldn't want to watch, in case it affected the average rating for everyone else. In the end we found that the "not interested" button was a tolerable compromise, but focus group work with more complex alternatives was rather negative. Neil/.

I agree that adding an "own" button all over the place, especially within already-cluttered lists, would be a bad thing to do. If the "own" capability were to be added to the site, then it makes sense to me to add it only to the item detail page for a particular DVD. So if you see "When Harry Met Sally" somewhere, you can click on the thumbnail image of the DVD cover or click on the title link, taking you to the "When Harry Met Sally" detail page. On that page, I wouldn't mind a "I own this DVD -- please don't recommend it to me" checkbox or button.

I think the key thing I've discovered in the past 24 hours with Netflix is that Netflix seems to think that when a customer thinks "I saw that movie already" what they're really saying is "I rented that movie already." Furthermore, that "I want to rate this movie" equals "I rented this movie (either from Netflix or somewhere else) and I have no intention of renting it ever again".

I disagree. "I saw that movie already" could mean all kinds of things. Surely I am not the only moviegoer in the world (who knows! maybe I am, and this will be yet another discovery) that has seen movies in theaters and thought "I wanna rent that when it comes out"?

"I want to rate this movie" can mean "I saw it and want to rate it so high as a way of Netflix reminding me about it in the future so I'll rent it." I can't believe I'm the only customer out of 700,000 customers who thinks this way.

I don't think Netflix's current messaging makes it clear enough that "If you rate something, you're never gonna see it here again." I think that's a dangerous assumption that could hurt revenue.

If I go to Blockbuster, I walk through the aisles and see lots of movies I want to rent. But I have a limited budget, and limited amount of time, so I don't rent them all at once. It might be months or years before I get around to a particular title. I try to make a mental note that I wanna rent X and Y and Z in the future, but then a month later when I return to Blockbuster and they've rearranged all the shelves, I don't remember the three titles I wanted to rent. Is Netflix "ignoring" this really valuable info I'm sharing with it, about movies I intend to rent in the future? As a user, I assumed incorrectly, it seems, that the only way I could convey my intent to rent was to rate highly, so that Netflix would keep recommending the movies to me. The underlying assumption of Netflix seems to be you should only rate stuff you've seen but never intend to rent.

Shouldn't there be a way (maybe not through ratings) of the customer indicating to Netflix that "oh I want to rent that one, keep reminding me about it so I'll eventually rent it"? Perhaps I'm talking Amazon wish-list here.

UPDATE: Continued in Part Six...

nettle on Netflix, part 4

by Brian L. Dear

 

 

More on Ratings

Some more thoughts on Ratings are necessary, after some correspondence with Neil at Netflix. Let me start with a table:

	OWN	DON'T OWN
LIKE	If you own the movie and you like it, then I argue that you should be able to tell Netflix that you own it and like it. By saying you own it, you're telling Netflix to never recommend it again (unless say a Special Edition or Director's Cut version comes out or something), but recommend others similar to it.	If you do not own a movie but you like it (in other words, you probably saw it at a theater or a friend's house), then you want Netflix to know that you like it and also you want Netflix to recommend it to you since it's a movie you don't own but would like to rent some day. This makes Netflix become a reminder, which is something I think a knowledgable, albeit virtual rental-store-clerk should do for the customer.
DON'T LIKE	This one's easy: just indicate "Not Interested" or some low star rating, and one assumes Netflix will never recommend this movie to you again.	Same thing: just indicate "Not Interested" or some low star rating, and one assumes Netflix will never recommend this movie to you again.

Of the four possibilities with any DVD, it's the "Like but Don't Own" that concerns me the most: I don't own it, but I really liked it when I saw it last year at the movie theater. I stashed away a mental note saying "I wanna rent that some day." I come to Netflix and there's the movie again. For some reason I am not ready to rent it right now, but I go ahead and rate it 5 stars.

Now, Neil from Netflix says, "If you rate it, we tend not to show it to you again. So if you own it and rate it (high or low), you won't see it recommended, but you WILL see similar items recommended."

I give you Exhibit A, right from the Netflix site:

The assumption at Netflix is that rating indicates you don't want something recommended, it seems. The problem is, I am "especially likely to enjoy" a whole bunch of movies I have seen in theaters but never rented.

I went and rated 125 movies this weekend --- all movies that I'd seen in movie theaters at some point in the past, but all movies that I do NOT own.... As a user, my understanding of ratings was if you rate it, Netflix will better understand that you like it or not -- period. Not that it will better understand that you like it or not and then never recommend it to you ever again. So much for this particular user thinking that I could use Netflix as a "reminder service" to remind me about movies I like and want to "rent some day"....

Heck, I've been known to go to Blockbuster and rent a movie, and then a year or two later, go back to Blockbuster and rent the same movie again. Say I have friends or relatives over and we want to watch that movie. I was hoping I could do the same with Netflix. But if Netflix hides movies from me that I say I like, then there are many rental opportunities that I the customer and Netflix the company are missing out on, yes?

If I read Neil correctly, I'm now screwed. None of those 125 movies I rated will ever be recommended to me. Yikes!

Hope to hear more clarifications from Netflix folks on this.

That's all for Part Four... will post an update when I hear back from Netflix.

UPDATE: Continued in Part Five...

nettle on Netflix, part 3

by Brian L. Dear

Part Three of an Ongoing Series

Let's see.... where were we? Ah yes.

3. Ratings
One thing a new customer notices right away on Netflix is the ratings. They're everywhere!

It's funny: Netflix does ratings exactly, and I mean exactly, as I proposed we do them for my.mp3.com, oh so many years ago, when I worked at MP3.com. The idea was the same: five stars per song and per album. We'd show five black outlines of stars next to each song and album, and fill only enough stars with red to indicate what the community's overall average rating was for something. And then you as the customer could mouse over the stars and click on one of the five stars, and in so doing, indicate your own rating for that item. Your own rating would then be added to the community average. I'm not mentioning this to say I invented the idea first --- but great minds do think alike. :-) Someone else thought of it long before the web I'm sure. I just find it eerie to see a design idea implemented, exactly as I envisioned it years ago.

During my tenure at MP3.com, I was an advocate for letting users rate more than just music. I argued that users should be able to rate everything on the site. My motto was: "if they can't review it, then at least let 'em rate it, but there better be a good reason why they can't review it and rate it." Amazon went this direction -- their site is full of ways for users to share their likes and dislikes. I wanted MP3.com users to rate the artists, their actual band names, their songs, their CDs, their CD covers, their liner notes, even their page design (artists owned much of the look and feel of their artist pages on MP3, much like sellers own a lot of the look and feel of their item pages on eBay). Rating and reviewing stuff and sharing how well or little you liked something seemed like a good idea at the time --- when "site stickiness" was all the rage.

Michael Robertson, CEO and head-honcho of MP3.com, was violently against ratings of songs and wasn't a big fan of user-created reviews either. Thus, him being CEO and head-honcho and all, you never saw any of that on the MP3.com site. :-) Michael's argument was that if you let people rate stuff, you get community averages of 3.2 stars for every damn thing, and so while the idea sounded cool in theory, in practice it's meaningless information.

Knowing what people think of the music they listen to is kinda important if you're going to do a recommendation engine like Netflix's CineMatch, although in MP3.com's case, it was rating music (hey, we shoulda called it... MusicMatch! Oh, wait, that was taken already.)

Instead of ratings, Michael argued, we'll be able to feed our recommendation engine with data on how well users like songs by noting what songs they listen to, how many times they listen to them, and if we want to get really fancy, how much of each particular song they listen to (in other words, how long into the song did they listen -- just a few seconds? half? the full song?). I was never a fan of this approach because simply recording the fact that they listened to something (and how long they listened) didn't communicate to us exactly what the user felt --- only by letting them rate their music would we know if they loved what they heard or thought it sucked, or something in between. We had no idea if they were really listening, or talking on the phone, or gone to the bathroom, or what.

Now, a few years later, I have to wonder: if we had let users rate songs, would things have been any different? Would the users have enjoyed the service more? Would they have valued it more? Who knows.

So we come to Netflix, which is ratings-heaven, like Amazon. Everything is ratable, everything is reviewable. Just like a proper content/community/ecommerce website should be, right?

Maybe.

Let's take a closer look:

• [Good]: If you're going to do ratings, do them well, and do them everywhere, and Netflix does a good job. There's a lot of JavaScript behind those star ratings (somebody was very very busy, I imagine!) but they work on every browser I've tried, and the behavior is consistent and predictable.

• [Troublesome]: One concern I have with Netflix's implementation of ratings is that they seem too in-yer-face. Too loud. Too big. Take a look at the picture above. The "Rent" button is dwarfed by the screen-space taken over by the five stars and the "Not Interested" button. Put a dozen, two dozen, three dozen of these DVD covers on a single page, and suddenly things get very busy. I wonder if there's been any user testing on Netflix's part to see if all that "star clutter" gets in the way of the bread-and-butter of the business -- the "Rent" button. Futhermore, I wonder if there's been any testing to see if there's any psychologically negative effect by having the phrase "Not Interested" underneath every damn DVD pictured on the page.

  Does the appearance of so many "Not Interested" buttons on the page have any subliminal effect on the user? Do all those "Not Interested" buttons suggest "These aren't the droids you're looking for" to the user?

  What does the data say, I wonder? Maybe Netflix can share their findings with us nettlers.

• [Proposed Enhancement]: Netflix basically has a rating system with values of 0 through 5, where 0 means "not interested" (or zero stars), and 1 through 5 are the star values. Netflix in my opinion is missing one additional rating value: the "I own it" value.

  I happen to own about 100 DVDs, and tons of VHSs and laserdiscs on top of that. In other words, I own hundreds of movies already. I don't want Netflix's recommendation engine to recommend any of these particular hundreds of movies because I own 'em already! But there they are, the Ghosts, the Star Treks, the Die Hards, the David Lean films, the Big Easys, the Clint Eastwoods, the Godfathers, the Shawshanks, the Crimson Tides; they're all there, all over the place: Netflix recommending stuff I already own. This hurts my browsing experience. This lowers my expectations of Netflix's ability to recommend stuff to me. Relevance is the key to having a recommendation engine work. When a recommendation engine recommends stuff I already have, relevance goes down the drain.

  If I discover that browsing is unrewarding, then I leave or revert to searching. Searching implies I know what I want. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I want the all-knowing virtual video-store-rental-clerk that is Netflix to recommend stuff to me. But it's doing a bad job doing so, what with all these irrelevant recommendations. So I wind up not renting. This is bad for me the customer. This is way bad for Netflix the business.

  What I'm trying to say is:

  Recommendations for movies I already own waste value screen real estate. Seeing recommendations for movies I already own wastes my time. The value of my Netflix browsing experience goes down as the number of "Ughh, I own that one already" DVD recommendations goes up. There ought to be a way for me to tell Netflix what stuff I already own. There ought to be a way for me to RATE the stuff I already own.

  At this point, Netflix (if you're still reading along, and I hope you are), you might say: look, just click on "Not Interested" for those DVDs you already own. To which I say, NO, that would be VERY BAD.

  Here's why: let's say there was a way for me to tell you I owned Star Trek I, II, III, and IV -- the movies -- but not V or VII. If I couldn't rate I, II, III, and IV, you might not know how I feel about them. Perhaps they were all given to me as a gift. Perhaps I'd give all of them only one star each. Wouldn't this be valuable to know? If your recommendation engine knew this about me, then it might keep quiet about recommending V and VI. Or if I'd rated them all four or five stars, it might be loud about recommending V and VI. If instead all I could do was click "Not Interested" on I, II, III, and IV, even though I loved 'em, say, you'd never recommend V and VI and that'd be a shame. (After all, VI is pretty good. :-)

  In the end, I think relevance would be increased by Netflix knowing more about me -- and this is one instance where I'd probably be willing to tell a website about stuff I own.

• [Another Proposed Enhancement]: Let users set preferences to indicate whether they even want to see all these star ratings and not-interested things. Most of the time I simply don't care to look at the ratings stuff -- but I might care a lot on the particular DVD's detail page. But in search results? Blah. While browsing? Eh. Maybe. It'd be nice if the ratings could be turned on or off by the user.

• [Good]: Just to show I'm not entirely unhappy :-), let me wrap up Ratings by saying that Netflix seems to already be on the way to recognizing the above issues -- there are places around the site where you can tell the system, "Don't show me titles I've already rented." That's good. (Of course, maybe customers want to rent stuff again in six months. Perhaps another preference.....)

4. The "Rent" Button
Now we come to the heart of the matter -- the graphical button that causes dollars to flow into Netflix and DVDs to flow out: the red "Rent" button. Some observations and thoughts:

• [Color]: I wonder about the choice of color. Did red test best with users, or...? Red so dominates the look and feel of the site -- red company logo, red envelopes, red rating-stars, red navigational-bar background banner colors, red, red, red. And fire-engine red at that. My own personal opinion only, but I find it red to be kinda harsh. (I also wonder about that segment of the population that's color-blind.)

  My main concern with the color has to do with the unclicked versus clicked state of the button. I'll deal with that issue separately below.

• [Size and Shape]: The "Rent" button is exactly the same width as the DVD-cover thumbnail image above it. Same rectangular shape (harkening back to my earlier comments in this series, about the rigid, rectangular design style throughout the site). I wonder if alternatives would work better with users? Did you try a pill-shape or some other shape whose silhouette would more contrast and stand out from the rectangular DVD box above it?

• [Unclicked vs Clicked Colors: Very Bad]: Take a look for yourself. On the left we have an unclicked "Rent" button. On the right we have one that I've clicked with the mouse, telling Netflix that I wanna rent it:
  
  Can you say "S-U-B-T-L-E"? Good. Now say "T-O-O   S-U-B-T-L-E". See, you agree with me. :-) This one kinda baffles me. Why the button on the right isn't orange or green or some other color is beyond me. Why the label on the button on the right hasn't also changed from "Rent" to "Added" or "Queued" or "Now in Queue" or "In Queue" or "Chosen" or "Renting" or something is beyond me.

That's enough for now. We'll continue this in Part Four.

Continued in Part Four...

Madstone, Part 3

Jim Sheehan, President of Madstone Theaters LLC, responds to nettle through (PR guy? publicist? not sure) Dave Anderson of Madstone Films. Here's the email (which Anderson encouraged me to publish) unedited, in its entirety:

Subject: Hello Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 18:22:13 -0400 From: Dave Anderson Brain, Jim Sheehan asked me to pass along this message: +++ Dear Brian, Sorry to hear you were less than thrilled with your time at Madstone. We don't like anyone going home disappointed-although it seems worth noting that the vast majority of last weekend's three thousand plus film lovers (felt pretty crowded to us!) were quite happy. Among the memorable highlights, unflappable staffer Bart "the Human Trailer" had 'em rolling in the aisles with snarky comments and obscure trivia while introducing Clerks and other films. Regrettably, he wasn't at your screening, but hopefully you'll get to enjoy him next time. In fact, we'd love to have you back on the house. Just say when and you've got a pair of tickets and two tasty smoothies waiting for you. In the meantime, we noticed that you seem quite intent on finding out what our name means. Don't go for much mystery in your life, huh? (Do you know what a Miramax is?) Well, since you insist, we'll let you in on the secret: a Madstone is a Hopi Indian term for a rock that, legend has it, can be used to remove the venom from a snakebite. In any case, you raised a number of interesting questions and concerns. I've attached the press release announcing our opening that hopefully will provide some of the answers you were seeking. We appreciate your impressively thorough (definitely thorough) evaluation and hope to incorporate some of your counsel into the ongoing process of getting to know what matters most to all the discerning film-lovers we are here to serve. And so you know: we've already talked to our staff to make sure they can answer the types of questions you asked; we're looking into that mysterious hum you heard; we've made sure the web site is healthy again; and we're also thinking about creating a brochure that explains in more detail what Madstone will be bringing to San Diego (the material you saw dealt only with membership-which, by the way, many folks have already signed up for). As for the trailers, they will be up and running this weekend-even though many folks actually made a point of thanking us for leaving them out. Well, I guess you can't please everyone. But we genuinely hope to please you eventually. In the meantime, take us up on that comp invite, come enjoy a movie you haven't already seen, and hang out with some fellow film fans in our lounge. We think you just might find them to be pretty happy with their time at Madstone. Who knows, maybe the experience will even remove some of the venom... Best, Jim Sheehan President Madstone Theaters P.S. Digital projection is in the works but we're waiting on a few technology developments. We'll keep you posted.

I wrote back and thanked Jim for taking the time to write. He didn't quite answer all of my questions directly (I had a fairly clear list of 'em in Part Two of the Madstone articles), but he did provide a press release which goes into some more detail.

The attachment to the above email was a Microsoft Word document. Setting aside my age-old rule never to open Word document attachments in email, I did this time with the hope that no viruses had hitched a ride. :-) So far so good (knocking on wood). I've converted the attachment to PDF file for your viewing pleasure (warning, it's 300k). All it is is the press release that went out announcing the opening of Madstone San Diego.

Jim mentions someone named "Bart" who provided an introduction to some of the films. Alas, no Madstone employees were present to introduce the movies in the two shows I attended last weekend.

I've requested a meeting with Madstone's new San Diego Director of Audience Services to get a better idea of what Madstone has in store for the San Diego area. Will follow up when I hear back.

nettle on Netflix, part 2

by Brian L. Dear

Part Two of an Ongoing Series
[Read Part One]

Last time, we looked at the Netflix homepage. This time, we'll look at quite a few other aspects of the service.

By the way, I heard from Neil Hunt, VP of Ecommerce at Netflix, who read Part One and informed me that the happy puppy has a better conversion rate than the happy woman. But only "by a whisker," he says. Neil also says that of course they have data for all of the things I asked 'em about. He also says that "testing reveals that browsing before signing up for the service is very negative; potential customers apparently browse until their 10-minute time slot is up, and fail to sign up. There's a bunch more work for us to do here, of course." He adds that the "featured null" is "an exclusive for viewers from Nettle :-)". Such a kidder. Hope to hear back from Netflix after you've read Part Two below!

If you're looking at the picture and wondering, yes, you guessed right. My first three Netflix DVDs arrived, each in a separate red envelope (they're not quite exactly the same as pictured in the mouth of the puppy, but that's ok :-). Took only one day for the discs to arrive -- thanks no doubt to there being a Santa Ana fulfillment center and me being in Southern California. Netflix had estimated the discs would arrive today, so it was nice to see that they were early.

A quick note on trying to open these envelopes -- you have to be careful or you'll rip 'em. There's a little instructional blurb inside a white oval at the lower-left-hand corner of the front envelope that tells you to "Open Here" (see picture above). A potential usability issue is the fact that the arrow to the left of "Open Here" points directly left, when in fact you have to insert a finger directly under the "Open Here" oval blurb, get between the two pages, then motion left and upwards, tearing along the perforation.

• [Recommendation]: Consider changing the arrow next to "Open Here" so it points to the bottom or to the corner.

There's also a sticker at the top center that you have to carefully split in two. If you do all that, then the envelope opens like a book to reveal the DVD disc hidden in a sleeve inside.

The DVD is enclosed in a small Tyvek sleeve. On one side of the sleeve is a bar-code and the DVD title, running time, and a mini description.

In all three of my rentals, the Tyvek sleeves were well-worn from their travels around the country (I'm suddenly reminded of Indiana Jones: It's not the years, it's the mileage..) It's amazing this flimsy packaging survives the United States Postal System. One wonders how many "cycles" (pick-and-pack, ship-to-customer, customer-uses, customer-reseals-envelope, customer-drops-in-the-mail, USPS-ships-to-fulfillment-center) these discs can go through before wearing out or being crushed, cracked, or scratched.

Another data point -- these things are easy to lose track of (read: throw away) once they're inside one's house. It'd be interesting to find out what percentage of customers returns discs in non-Netflix envelopes.

One other thing --- in a way I was disappointed but not surprised that for each DVD I rented, I got no DVD box, with a 4-color printed front and back cover, the back cover detailing all the goodies inside. The kind of packaging you get when you buy a DVD. I can understand why Netflix doesn't make that part of the equation -- the service would cost way more than $20/mo that's for sure. But still.

So now let's continue recording observations of the Netflix website experience:

1. The Login Sequence

• [Good]: The login page is clean and to the point. And Netflix smartly adds a padlock icon and the label "Secure Server" to give the necessary warm fuzzies to those users hesitant to proceed otherwise.

• [Weird]: Sometimes when I log in, I get a message saying something like "it looks like you're already registered!" Huh? Of course I'm already registered, that's why I can log in. Duh. I wish I could reproduce this anomaly, but, naturally, now I can't figure out how to reproduce it and I neglected to screen-grab an instance of it so the whole world (and most importantly, Netflix staffers) could see. If it happens again I'll add a note and picture here.

2. Search

• [Good]: The Search box and button are prominently and consistently located across the site. So far so good.

• [Great]: I'm happy to report that Netflix passed what I call The Z Test, where I simply type in the letter "Z" to see if they have Costa-Gavras' famous 1969 political film. And guess what, Netflix has it! (It was the first thing I rented.)

• [Really Bad]: Netflix is not forgiving of user typos. Or it makes mistakes when users make mistakes. (And remember the first rule of nettle design: The User Is Always Right, which in a Search experience translates to "Do what the user means, not what the user says.") If I type in "The Stinge" or "The Stang" instead of "The Sting", I don't get "The Sting", the Redford-Newman movie. Indeed, if by accident I type "The Stinge" I get a search results page with the banner "Available Titles for The Rolling Stones" with a list of four Rolling Stones titles! Um, dudes, this is not good. Successful searches are critical to customer success (read: Netflix long-term success) so spend the R&D money and fix this, huh? Think SOUNDEX at the very least.

  Netflix, let me put it to you another way. Go to Amazon. Go ahead, fire up a browser window and open on Amazon's homepage. Select "DVD" in the Search pulldown, then type in "The Stinge" and click "GO!". Guess what. Amazon does it right. You guys need to as well. I rest my case.

• [Bad]: If you type in a movie which doesn't exist in DVD form and Netflix doesn't recognize it, say, a title like "Billion Dollar Brain," Netflix comes back with either empty results or bogus results for "matching" actor/director names (Ok, so I'd never heard of actor Brain Davies or director David Brain -- the things one learns...). This is where I have to question Netflix's strategy:

  Netflix should be the All-Knowing Oracle of Movies, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. No excuses. Netflix should know everything there is to know about all movies ever made by anyone anywhere in the world.. It should be the Ultimate Movie Authority.

  
  Hold on... now I'm on a roll.... Netflix should be built upon a database no less comprehensive than IMDB, with every movie ever made in the history of movies. Yes, yes, Netflix, I understand that there are only roughly 12,000 DVD titles in existence, in a world with well over 100,000 (way more, probably) movies ever made. But guess what: I don't particularly care that there are only roughly twelve-thousand DVD titles in existence. And yes, yes, I understand that the user experience might not be so hot if only 12% of the searches (worst case, say) were successful and the rest unsuccessful. Why am I not that concerned? Because you know and I know that it would never be that bad. Those 12,000 titles are the most well-known, in-demand, and frequently-requested titles, so the average user wouldn't have a "sorry we don't have that title" search results experience very often.

  See, I view Netflix as my replacement for Blockbuster. I want it to be the replacement for Blockbuser. I hope I never have to go back to Blockbuster again. I've been going there for years, and the experience has never been that great. But one thing I demand of my Blockbuster replacement is an authoritative, albeit virtual, video-rental-store clerk. Someone who knows movies in and out. Netflix's CineMatch(tm) technology is a start, but we're not all the way there yet.

  It's encouraging to know that Netflix already knows about some unreleased DVDs. For example, if I search for the recently-released movie "XXX" (the Vin Diesel vehicle), guess what, Netflix recognizes the title! Just like an all-knowing virtual rental store clerk should. Netflix even shows a picture for me on the DVD item detail page. And a description. And, interestingly, I find that the "Rent" button has been replaced with a "Save" button --- it's a title that hasn't been released yet and Netflix knows it. If I click on "Save", Netflix adds the movie to a special third section of my account's Rental Queue, so now, in addition to seeing a list of stuff that's either already in my possession or in the mail on its way to me, and seeing a list of stuff that will be sent to me once I return the stuff I have, I can see a list of stuff that is not yet released but when it is, it'll immediately go into my active queue. Cool!

  See, I view everything that's not on DVD as "still to be released in DVD format." So Netflix should know about "Billion Dollar Brain" as readily as it recognizes "XXX". It might be months or years or never that "Billion Dollar Brain" comes out in DVD, but that's ok. I wanna know that you know that it exists. I wanna be able to rate it as well. Repeat: Netflix should let me rate movies even if they're not in DVD format. It can only help make CineMatch smarter, yes?

  None of this should come as any surprise. It's what Amazon has done for years -- the database has everything, even if the stuff isn't in the warehouses.

  Oh but wait, I'm not done! :-) Let's return to the "Billion Dollar Brain" example for a second. Imagine if Netflix's database had a record for this title. So when you searched for it, you found it, and you could click to see the DVD item detail page for this title. Great. So what it's not out in DVD format. Lots of opportunities here:

  • Let users fill out a form to petition the studio or rights-holder to make a DVD version for the title! The studios win, Netflix wins, the customer wins. Everybody's happy!

  • Provide a "Save" button or somesuch to indicate that "I'm interested in this flick -- I recognize it isn't in DVD format but notify me when it comes out in the format!"

  • Pull an Amazon and let partners and mom-n-pops (read: zShops) sell VHS tapes or laserdiscs -- new or used -- and the customer's happy. It doesn't hurt you -- you'd get a piece of the action -- and the customer would get the movie they're looking for -- only they'd be buying it not renting it. Not a problem in my book.

  Okay. Enough about Search, for now anyways. Onwards...

  3. Ratings and Rent-buttons
  Waitaminnit. Are you exhausted reading this Part Two? I'm exhausted writing it. Let's call it a day here, and cover Ratings, Rent-buttons and all kinds of other good stuff in Part Three in a few days.

  Continued in Part Three...

  Posted by brian at 08:55 AM | Comments (5)

Update on Madstone

Update at 16:54: Jim Sheehan, President of Madstone Theaters, responds via email to nettle. Also, the first three Netflix rentals arrived in the mail. More details forthcoming. :-)

nettle on Netflix, part 1

What's Netflix?
Netflix launched in 1998(?) as a new web-based service for renting DVD movies. Customers pay $20/month and can rent any number of DVDs which are sent via snail-mail.

Here are some backgrounder articles:

* An August 18 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution looks at Netflix and Blockbuster.

* An August 11 story in the Washington Post.

* A June 6 story in Salon.

* The Motley Fool took a look at Netflix back on June 10 and they weren't happy with it as an investment. And so nettle opens a file on Netflix. Time to check 'em out. Over the next couple of weeks we'll take a look at both Netflix and lesser-known GreenCine. First, let's do Netflix.

I used to drive by Netflix's Los Gatos headquarters every time I took the dog to the vet and I've been reading about the company on The WELL for years, but despite routinely visiting the Netflix website I never signed up.

But Netflix is offering a 10-day free trial right now, so I figured, what the heck. I'll rent some vids, and see what the experience is like.

Netflix does some things well, some things not so well. What follows are random observations regarding what I saw and how I was able (or not able) to find and do what I wanted to find and do on the site.

1. The Home Page
There are three main types of home pages, depending on your browser's cookie status.

a. Cookies-Off Home Page [Good] Netflix handles browsers with cookies-turned-off gracefully and well, with a page specifically designed for just such a situation. Users get some brand awareness and incentive for turning the damn cookies on and Netflix even explains in detail how to do so for various popular browsers. Good job, guys. [Bad]: Hmm, maybe it's not Good after all. I mean think about it: if Amazon's homepage behaved this way, Amazon would have a lot of explaining to do (and would probably have fewer customers). Netflix has made a technology decision to go all-or-nothing on cookies. It'd be interesting to know what the data says about percentage of users hitting Netflix.com in this state versus the other two states listed below. If the percentage is small, then this is fine. If the percentage is significant, then maybe this is not so fine. Netflix, do you know the percentage? [So-so]: There are multiple colors for text hyperlinks on this page. This is an inconsistency. The most important link on the page, the one that says "My Cookies Are Activated! I'm Ready to Try Netflix for Free Now!" has black text, even though it's a hyperlink. Whereas elsewhere on the page are links in the conventional blue color. Some users might not realize the most important link on the page is actually a link, if they're used to only blue links. b. Cookies-On, Not-logged-in Home Page If you're not logged in, or are an unregistered user, but your browser's cookies are turned on, you get a "sign up now" promo page for a home page. When you arrive at this version of the homepage, uncookied and unknown to Netflix, it's like arriving at the parking lot of a Blockbuster store. You're not yet in the store, but you can see through the store's window and know that there are videos to be rented inside. Of course, being in the parking lot, you have no idea whether or not the store has what you want. You kinda have to go inside... [Good] The design is clean, not dense; lots of whitespace. Netflix understands that women's faces and friendly animals appeal to consumers, so it's not surprising that the top center position of the page alternates between a happy woman holding a Netflix envelope, and a happy puppy holding the same. (Yo Netflix: we're dying to know what your data's telling you: are you getting a better conversion rate with the woman or the puppy? Do tell!) [Bad] This version of the homepage is all about customer acquisition, with loud and clear above-the-fold messaging. That's good! Go get 'em, Netflix! Sign 'em up! Gotta get to 1 million subscribers, and fast! Keep kicking Blockbuster's ass! Just one problem: there is no affordance anywhere on the page for searching for DVD titles. This is not good. Imagine this scenario: Joe Vidiot comes to the homepage, cookies turned on, and thinks, hmm, all my friends have Netflix, but I know I'm more sophisticated than them, and they'd never rent the kind of stuff I'd rent, but I'm curious to know if Netflix has Z, by Costa-Gavras. Well guess what, there's no way to search. Joe Vidiot is not one to back down easily, and looks very carefully all over the page, top to bottom, bottom to top. Nope. No search. Nada. Then he hears the TV on in the other room, he looks at his watch, sees it's time for The Simpsons, and gets up from the computer and walks away. You've lost a customer. Bad. I can hear Netflix saying, "But wait, there is a "Browse the store" link!" Yes indeed, there is one. If you look very carefully you might find it. But that doesn't really help the "I know exactly what I want" customer, now does it? Only a search option does that. [So-so]: One of the most prominent above-the-fold positions is held by the redemption code text-entry field and corresponding button. At first glance, I bet many users think that's the search box. (I wonder how many movie titles users type into that box. Netflix, have you checked? What? You're not logging everything? How else are you gonna know what's on the mind of the user? Data is your friend.) Also, sometimes this redemption code stuff doesn't appear on this page. It seems to be there sometimes, and sometimes it's not there. What about users who have a redemption code, but have to get up from the computer to find it, and when they come back, they go do something else with their browser and then return to Netflix only to find the replotted page missing the redemption entry box. What then? Could this be an issue, or is it minor? Only Netflix knows. [Trick]: If you really really want to search and you're determined to find a way to search, then you can click on one of the three "hottest movies" DVD covers and find yourself taken to the detail page for that DVD. And guess what? There's a nice search box ("Find movies, actors, & genres") right under the Netflix logo at in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Actually, you can click on almost any of the links from this home page ("Frequently Asked Questions", "Browse the Store", "Customer Service", "Your Account" ... they all go to pages that provide Search capability). [Recommendation]: Let's assume for a moment that Netflix has done its homework and learned that most users visiting the site for the first time are not in a "I know what I want" frame of mind. Let's assume their testing has told them that what they really want to do is browse. Fine. Shouldn't the affordance to "Browse" be more prominent on the page? This page presumes that the user has already made up his or her mind and wants to register and become a customer. It's not that way in real life. In real life, you go into the rental store, walk through the aisles, find things you want to rent, bring them to the counter, and pay to rent. Oh, and you sign up too. But signing up is a pain, an afterthought, a necessary evil. It's not the goal. Why should it be any different on Netflix's homepage? Think of it this way. When you walk into Blockbuster, Blockbuster is glad you're there, and you can go anywhere you want in the store. Blockbuster knows that when you decide to rent something, you'll need to sign up first if you're a new customer. But they don't make it difficult for you to find what you want before you've signed up. You really ought to consider adding a prominently-visible search capability as well as making the browse capability more visible. [Good]: The "NETFLIX is the best way to rent DVDs" section of the page is good in that it helps explain, both verbally and iconically, the Netflix Elevator Speech to the consumer: "come here to find titles to rent, rent 'em, Netflix mails 'em to you, you mail 'em back... whenever." c. Cookies-on, User-Logged-In Home Page And now we come to the main event. The real homepage. You're logged in, Netflix knows who you are, the race is on. Some observations about the real home page: [Good]: Clean, uncluttered page layout. Good use of whitespace. The genres and navigation links are prominent and understandable and well-positioned in the left-hand column. [Great]: The home page is highly personalized once you're logged in. Why, it's almost like a "my netflix" :) The very top of the page shows how many movies are in the queue, and how many movies you've rated. I'm going to talk a lot more about rating in Part 2 of the Netflix review, so stay tuned. I notice it doesn't say how many movies you have out (or "in the mail"). It'd be nice to have that too. [So-so]: While the page is clean, there's something very sterile in the presentation. Could it be that it's too clean? Too perfect? It's a very strict, right-angle, rectangles-rule design, from the red box around the logo to the harsh rectangle shapes for the Rent buttons. To this user at least, the presentation feels cold, and I'm not quite sure why. Contrast Netflix's design style with a site like eBay's, the reigning king of sloppy, inconsistent (though they're getting better, slowly but surely), homebrew, curvy, swap-meet aesthetic (and I mean that as a compliment). eBay has charm. Netflix has no charm. Now, you may say, "what has charm got to do with anything?" Or, "why should Netflix convey charm?" And you might be on to something. Should Netflix's presentation convey more charm? I guess another way of describing the cold feel of Netflix's home page is that it doesn't feel "natural". There's no warmth of human contact, there's no sense of lots of other people are here too. More on this later, in Part Two. [Good]: The search capability is prominent, right by the logo, and consistently stays there across the site. [Weird]: What the heck is a "Featured Null"? Saw this on the homepage today. Either Netflix is way more geeky than I, or the word "null" is a script error on Netflix's servers. Surely there isn't a genre called "null"? :-)

Some things we'll explore in Part Two:

• The Login and Registration sequences
• Search
• More on the overall design style of Netflix
• Ratings, ratings, ratings everywhere!
• The Rent Button
• The Social Side of E-Commerce: Could it help Netflix?
• Is it easier to find DVDs in Netflix than walking through the aisles of a video store?
• I Already Own That DVD, or, Why Netflix Needs to Know More About Its Users
• Did my first batch of DVDs rented from Netflix arrive? Find out in Part Two!

Part Two will appear on nettle within a few days. Check for it on the homepage, as well as right here at the bottom of this page.

As always, we'd love to hear from you. Comments? Questions? Rants? Raves? Email webmaster @ nettle.com.

Continued in Part Two...

Hollywood discovers Nettle

So far today we've had readers from Dreamworks SKG, Disney, Universal, and Paramount. Speak up! How are you hearing about nettle? Is it mentioned in a mailing list or something? Write to us and tell us how you came to be here and what you think of this blog so far!

The Madstone Conundrum, Part 2

Dear Madstone Theatres LLC:

I know. You guys are probably thinking, "Who's behind this nettle thing, and why are they picking on us?" Bear with me. Oh, and welcome to the 21st century. :-)

First, know that nettle very much wants you guys to succeed. Nettle is about pointing out issues to promising companies and engaging in a dialogue and fighting the good fight to help make such companies succeed.

The movie-theater world needs a revolution, and I'd love to see Madstone emerge as the leader of it. Question is, do you have what it takes? From what I saw this past weekend I have grave doubts.

Two days ago I wrote a story about my experience at your new San Diego theatre on August 10 and 11.. My expectations were not met. What were those expectations, and how did I come about having such high ones?

Well, for starters: in an October 2001 press release you announced the hiring of James Sheehan as the new President of Madstone Theaters LLC. In that release was this paragraph:

"I am thrilled to join a company as forward-thinking as Madstone," said Jim Sheehan. "Sophisticated audiences are hungry for a more upscale theater-going experience and Madstone Theaters will offer just the kind of modern style and community involvement that moviegoers have been hungering for. While our bread and butter will be independent and foreign film programming, digital projection will set Madstone apart in the marketplace. Madstone audiences will be able to experience events that have never before been available in theaters and we will see to it that our patrons play an active role in determining this programming and making our theaters a success."

The first time I read that I thought "Wow! Madstone Theaters sounds really exciting!" Could it be that moviegoers finally get a theater-chain that gets it?? This sounded very promising! Lots of buzzwords in that quote got my attention. If Madstone lives up to those promises, I remember thinking, this is one sophisticated audience member who's gonna be a happy camper.

Let's look at some of those buzzwords and promises:

• forward-thinking: Somebody has the vision there at Madstone HQ, it's clear. But the vision didn't get executed in San Diego, at least not in the opening weekend. Instead, Madstone came across as "old wine, new bottle."
• sophisticated audiences hungry for a more upscale theater-going experience: You better believe it. Not everyone can, and not everyone wants to, have a "home theater". Some people enjoy the experience of Going To The Movies. Comfortable seats. Reasonable prices. Great projection. Awesome sound. Excellent meta-info (lectures, flyers, web communities, clubs). Great before-and-after upsells (books, CDs, magazines all related to the film the moviegoer came to see).
• modern style: This is easy and cheap to do. But not what sophisticated audiences care for first and foremost.
• community involvement: Welcome to nettle, baby. We got yer community involvement right here. So what you gonna do about it?
• independent and foreign film programming: Bring it on. More and more of it.
• digital projection will set Madstone apart in the marketplace: Building it doesn't mean they will come. Like "modern style", high-tech only means so much. It's the experience, stupid.
• experience events... never before available in theaters: So what are they? Name them. The whole world is watching.
• our patrons play an active role in determining this programming and making our theaters a success: If so, answer your emails!

Here are some questions nettle (and I'm sure many readers) would like you to answer. We'd love to hear it staight from the chief, Jim Sheehan.

1. What is Madstone's vision?
What is it exactly that you're "forward-thinking" about? Where do you see Madstone Theaters in a year? In five? In ten?

2. What does "Madstone" mean?
Is it someone's name? What is the significance?

3. What should moviegoers think when they think "Madstone"?
When people think "Mercedes" various things come to mind. When people think "Coca-Cola" various things come to mind. When people think "Grey Poupon" various things come to mind. When people think "Disney" various things come to mind. What is supposed to come to mind when people think "Madstone"? Cuz I tell ya, what came to mind after the San Diego opening weekend was "what a disorganized, same-as-it-ever-was disappointment."

4. How is Madstone going to differentiate itself from Landmark?
Besides acquiring Landmark and thus making the question moot, I mean.

5. What are the plans for this digital projection?
You talk the talk, do you walk the walk?

6. Have you asked customers, "what do you want more: digital projection or stadium seats"?
Remember the customers' hierarchy of needs: they gotta be able to see the damn picture before they can notice how beautiful it is. I don't know about your other theaters, but the San Diego Madstone Theater is so very 1980s: it's just the Mann Hazard Center 7 Theatres warmed over. The bar's been raised. Stadium seats first, then expensive DLP projectors. Maybe.

That's enough for now. Madstone, the ball's in your court. nettle hopes to hear back from you. And as always, we welcome comments from our readers too!

Not a Peep

Two days after the Madstone story and still not a peep from anyone at Madstone, despite inquiries to various Madstone-agers including Jim Sheehan, President of Madstone Theatres. The clock's still tickin'.

Coming soon: new reports on Netflix and GreenCine. Stay tuned.

Madstone Followup

A day after the movie theater article and we note with dismay that Madstone Theaters' website continues to suffer "technical difficulties".

Madstone's site offers no email addresses or phone numbers. (This is a company that's clearly not a signatory of the Cluetrain Manifesto.) Still, some emails from nettle.com must have gotten through, because they didn't all bounce. :-)

So the countdown begins. How many days will it take for Madstone to reply? We'll let you know.

Wait. It gets worse. It's 6:30pm and we just called the Madstone Theaters recorded information phone number (thanks to Yahoo). The woman in the recording starts out describing the "free weekend" (August 9-11) and proceeds to read off all of the showtimes that are all now obsolete and in the past. She then mentions that after the free weekend, Madstone Theaters San Diego will be hosting the Cine Mexicano Film Series. The recording clicks and suddenly there's a man's voice, also describing the festival. There's only one problem. He proceeds to say "the following showtime information is for March 11th only." We didn't wait to find out what year.

nettle Goes to the Movies, or, What's a Madstone?

Quick Backgrounder on Madstone
Madstone Theaters is a division of Madstone (Corp? Inc? LLC? who knows, their websites don't say), a New York startup founded a couple years back by a Wall Street financier and an entertainment-biz exec. If you surf through their websites (making it past the numerous 404 errors and java servlet program errors -- it shouldn't be this hard!), and do some Googling, you'll find that in additon to Theaters, Madstone also has a Films division, which finances and produces low-budget indie films, and the Madstone DDN division, which seems to be a digital-projector distribution network venture, the kind of thing we've been reading about in those "future of movie theatre" articles over the past umpteen years.

 
 
 

Knocked Out by AMC?
When the 20-screen AMC megaplex opened a few blocks away from the Mann Hazard Center, I knew Mann's days were numbered. The AMC theatres offered stadium seats, better parking, more choices, more shops and restaurants before after the show. The Mann, and now the Madstone, has no stadium seats: it's a late-80s vintage design, cupholders yes, visibility, if not no, often iffy. Old school. I'd hoped that Madstone might have changed that, but I wasn't holding out for miracles. by Brian L. Dear

Dear Madstone Theaters, Inc.:

You guys blew it. You blew a golden marketing opportunity this past weekend to introduce yourselves properly to San Diego moviegoers. You had everything going for you: the setting, a captive audience of curious customers, a decent selection of free movies, a variety of concessions. A new theatre chain couldn't ask for a better marketing opportunity. Which, despite what you may say, is exactly what this was. Or at least could have been.

Marketing opportunity does not have to be a bad or evil thing. In this case, it was a chance for Madstone to show San Diegans what exactly Madstone is all about. It was a chance to provide a great first impression.

I'd already seen every free movie you were showing, so my main reason for driving down to the Hazard Center was to satisfy my curiosity about this new startup cinema company and get answers to these questions:

• What does the "Madstone" brand mean?
• Hell, what does the word mean?
• What does the company stand for? What are Madstone's values?
• What makes Madstone different from all the other chains?
• What are moviegoers supposed to think when they think "Madstone"?
• What's this Madstone DDN thingie and what does it mean to me? Are all films in Madstone Theaters going to be shown through digital projectors? Cool! Tell me more!
• Why should San Diegans go to this new Madstone theatre?

Unfortunately, I got no answers.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an average moviegoer. Most people who go to the movies are probably not thinking like architects and observing the flow of people through the spaces -- and obstacles -- both inside and outside. Most people aren't noting the popcorn on the floor, or the wasted straws on the counter, the mustard in the jalapeno jar, the smudges and scratches on the screen, or the missing right channel in the sound system (not that these were observed this particular weekend, but they're far too common, in my experience). Most people aren't observing how the movie-theatre company creates and works to maintain a brand identity with the moviegoers (those people who pay the theatre all of that cash, remember them?), through signage, responsive customer interactions, special services, seating, sightlines, quality of projection and audio, the design and content of brand-building shorts, inserts, and trailers before the feature presentations, etc. Most moviegoers couldn't care less.

But Madstone is apparently not targeting "most moviegoers". They seem to be targeting a more sophisticated clientele: serious moviegoers -- those who go to appreciate and support out-of-the-ordinary, independent filmmaking, not the next violent blockbuster. Those who are willing to sign up for an annual membership. "We're gonna make money through subscriptions!" -- where have we heard this before? But then, this is all just a guess, a guess based on perusing a rather cryptic "welcome brochure" provided at the lobby. A long list of membership benefits is provided, as well as pricing, yet nowhere does Madstone indicate exactly what it is members will be joining. Is this a film club? A cinema society? Will it have lectures, and special presentations from actors, directors, writers, producers, and editors? Will it offer advance screenings of feature films? Is that why I should join? I haven't the faintest idea. It's just not clear from the brochure.

I'm left knowing basically nothing about what Madstone's message or mission or vision is. All I went away with was a new question: "How the hell is this company going to be in business a year from now?"

It All Started With Yahoo
When I want movie showtimes I refer to a bookmarked Yahoo!Movies San Diego showtime listings page in my browser. I'd noticed over the past few months that the entry for Mann's Hazard Center theatre showed no showtimes, only a "Sorry, we have no information at this time" message. But two or three weeks ago, while randomly glancing through the page, I happened to see an entry for "Madstone Theaters" in the place where I used to see the old Mann Hazard Center listings. Months of asking "why doesn't Yahoo show showtimes for the Mann Hazard Center anymore?" were finally over. Curious, I typed "madstone.com" into my browser and, um, got something I wasn't expecting. Thank goodness for Google.

I made a simple mistake, once I got to Google, by typing "madstone theatres". Google's good, though, and not just suggested an alternative, but provided a link to it: "madstone theaters". (I spell it with an "re", Landmark spells it with an "re", but Madstone, they spell it with an "er" -- note to Madstone: guys, run, do not walk, to your nearest registrar and register madstonetheatres.com and while you're at it, buy the madstone.com domain!) The real Madstone Theaters website wasn't much of a help. It reminded me of a brand-new hotel with a few abstract murals on the wall but no furniture in the lobby and nobody at the registration desk. Looks promising, but nobody's home! I managed to find a registration page, so I signed up for the free weekend pass. The questionnaire was odd: "Which film genre best describes you: Scary, Romantic, Funny, Erotic, Classic, Animated, Foreign, Independent, Musical." How the hell are you supposed to answer that!?

Square Pegs, Round Holes
On Saturday, I went to Clerks. There were three or four people ahead of me at the box office window, All of them were filling out forms at a box office window not designed for customers to fill out forms. Certainly not three or four people at the same time. I'd already filled out the form on the website, and received an email from Madstone that I was told to print out and bring with me. Funny how the little mouse-holes that customers pass money through and ticket-tellers pass tickets and change through are not designed to accomodate 8 1/2 x 11" laser-printed sheets of paper with emails printed on them! Nevertheless, I handed the printout to the black-shirted woman who handed me a ticket and a little black card that would enable me to come back and see another movie for free -- this weekend only.

So I went in, immediately noticing that Madstone had painted the floor gray. (Probably not a good idea -- the floor surface is such that it will pick up scuffs and food-spillage marks fairly easily and I bet it's going to be a pain to keep clean! Prediction: if by this time next year Madstone is still in business, it will have covered the paint with carpet or tile or marble.)

I went into the dimly-lit auditorum showing Clerks, found a seat, sat down. Other than a 60-hz hum coming from the speakers behind the screen, there were no slides, no music -- none of the things that AMC and Pacific moviegoers in the San Diego area have become used to. Not that I'm complaining! Sitting through the latest "MovieTunes" urban contemporary pop & western muzak is not why I go to the movies. (Of course, I don't go for 60-hz buzzes either.)

In the aisle in front of me, a young couple sat down.

"I'm not used to this. There's no slides. What should we talk about?" she said.

"I don't know. How about I ask trivia questions or discuss Coca-Cola refreshments?" he said.

"So what is Madstone anyway?"

"I don't know."

"How to people know about this?"

"Dunno."

"Are they gonna try to be like an independent film theatre?"

So it went, while we all waited for whatever was going to happen to happen. It was good to know I wasn't the only one in the audience wondering about Madstone and What It All Means. It was bad to know there were only fifteen other people in the audience.

Finally the lights went out, and up came the message "View Askew Productions" on the screen, followed by the word "Dante" and suddenly there was a black-and-white movie playing and suddenly I remembered this was how Clerks began. I couldn't believe it. I shook my head in disbelief. Madstone just blew it. No introduction. No fanfare. No identity. No message. No brand. No story.

More Than Just Technical Difficulties
Perhaps you were curious enough, after the film, to rush home, fire up your web browser, and find out what Madstone Theaters is all about. Perhaps the web site would have the answers, since the black-shirted employees at the theatre apparently had none. Had you been this curious, had you visited their site this weekend, or even now, on the Monday after, you'd find a rather disconcerting home page, telling you that Madstone is currently experiencing technical difficulties. The question is, is this an elaborate joke? Or even a simple joke? Have you ever heard of a company that modifies its website on the weekend of a major new launch in a major market, and places not only a "we're having problems" message on its home page, but it goes to the trouble of putting it in huge, fancy letters!? No, this cannot be an elaborate joke. It's just profound cluelessness. Note to Madstone: guys, this is not how you create positive first impressions. This kind of homepage indicates you have no idea what you are doing, and that does not instill confidence in the moviegoer. Especially the sophisticated moviegoer looking for a new, edgy, theatre promising a great moviegoing experience.

Almost Famous? Gotta Ways to Go Yet, Madstone
Startups and black shirts are a long-standing tradition, and the Madstone employees were keeping the tradition alive. (Um, except, this is not an Internet startup. Maybe it thinks it is. Maybe that's the problem?) There were a lot of black shirts milling around inside the theatre lobby. Some behind the concession stand, two over by a kiosk apparently set up just for this special free weekend; others taking tickets. Strangely, there were far more black shirts than there were customers, at least when I arrived at 12:55 for a 1pm showing of Clerks. And when I came back on Sunday evening for a free showing of Almost Famous, the black shirts were everywhere once more. And once more, there were far more black shirts than there were customers. I was reminded of the movie Spinal Tap, where the band is appearing at a record store, only to find that none of their fans showed up. I guess Madstone used the same publicist. When Almost Famous was over, I walked out to find that the lobby was mostly deserted, it being now 9:30pm and most patrons having gone home. But the black shirts were everywhere still, and most did not seem to be busy. So I went up to one.

"Hi," I said. "I'm trying to figure out what Madstone Theaters is all about. And I haven't been able to. Maybe you could help me. I was hoping the theatrical experience would be somehow different, somehow new, with Madstone. It wasn't. What are you guys about? I noticed you didn't even explain what Madstone was about before the movie began. Instead the lights just went out and suddenly the movie started."

The Madstone lady looked at me like I was from Mars.

"Oh, we'll have introductions when we have our grand opening," she said. "For our free weekend we needed everyone on the floor."

"Oh, I see," I responded, thinking, Lady, you didn't answer my question followed by thinking Lady, do you know anything about the company you work for? While thinking of how I was going to re-word my question, I continued, saying, "So you're going to have real people at the front of the theatre introduce each film?"

"Yes," she said.

She looked at me with a blank expression. I looked back at her with the same, thinking, You still haven't answered my question. But before I could ask her the question in another way, she had turned away from me, to talk to someone else who has walked up to the kiosk. It was clear she did not want to talk with me further. Customers are from Mars, Companies from Venus.

I walked out of the lobby scratching my heard, wondering why Madstone's executives were not here to answer such questions. (Maybe that lady was a Madstone exec? Who knows? Should I care? I guess not.)

I think that's it in a nutshell -- Madstone did not engage this weekend's San Diego moviegoers in a conversation. It should have. It should have introduced itself, explained what it plans to do, what movies it plans to show, how it plans to show them. It should have explained to us why it is going to make a difference. It should have explained to us what value it is bringing into the San Diego movie market.

I'm left without any idea how Madstone is going to make a difference. They better hurry up and figure out how they're going to, or they're not going to make it.

I'm going to contact Madstone and bring this article to their attention. I'll post a followup with their reply.

Welcome to nettle.com!

Part blog, part magazine, nettle is a new website focused on exploring what works and what doesn't -- and what might work if they'd only change it -- in experience design. What is "experience design"? nettle sees it as the design of how people see, hear, communicate to and through, touch, smell, and feel artifacts in the world -- be they brick-and-mortar establishments like movie theatres, cars, planes, television commercials, or the latest computer software. No matter what, people experience these things -- they use them, they attend to them, they ignore them. What works? What doesn't work? What could work better? How could it work better, exactly? These are some of the things nettle's going to take a look at in coming issues. Be sure to drop us an email and let us know what you think.

For more about nettle, read on...