Nettle: One User's Experience

Nettle vs ACLU

by Brian Dear

Some time around one year ago, I joined the American Civil Liberties Union. I guess I felt, as an American, it was time to do my small part to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. So, yes, for the first time in my life, I became a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

But this blog entry isn't directly about politics or law or the work that this particular organization does. It's about the customer experience I had in dealing with the ACLU. It all started when I joined through the signup form on their website. . .

1. Carpet-Bombed by Non-Profit Organizations
I went to the site, clicked on the link to join, and found a signup form. It asked for name, address, all the usual stuff. So I filled it out, including my credit card info, and paid the minimum $20.

Not even a week had gone by before the deluge began. Big, thick colorful envelopes arrived, not from ACLU, but from Sierra Club, Americans United for the Separation of Church & State, the Nature Conservancy, Americans For This, Americans for That, Yadda Yadda Yadda. Organization after Organization after Organization. Most of them I had never heard of.

I was astounded. Not only by the sheer volume of the material, but by the considerable weight of the material. Typical envelope: glossy 4-color with big bold lettering urging me to join the organization. Inside, paper after paper, each a different size, often a different color -- as if maybe I might read JUST ONE of these, and be convinced to give money. Then there were the customized pens. Calendars. Posters. Personalized address labels. Colorful stamps. Bumperstickers. Flyers. Brochures. Booklets. Pamplets. Beg Letters. On and on. The number of trees that must have been cut down in order to manufacture these solicitation packages -- think about it. And to think that one of the worst offenders in this regard was none other than . . . Sierra Club! You think they'd notice the irony of their wasted mailings.

Well, it didn't take but a moment to put two and two together and assume that there was a direct correlation between my joining ACLU and my receiving daily inundations of junk mail from nonprofit organizations.

And, by the way, the junk mail was so fast in arriving, it beat the arrival of the ACLU membership card (a real card-carrying ACLU member!). But I simply had to assume ACLU had given out my personal information against my wishes.

After a while, I decided to contact ACLU to see what could be done about it. I wrote to Anthony Romero, Executive Director of ACLU. He admitted right away that ACLU was no different than "most other non-profit membership organizations", which "identifies potential new members through exchanging membership lists with other, like-minded organizations." He went on to say that "the ACLU is always extremely careful to protect the privacy of our members who request that we do so." He said he'd remove my name from "the list that is shared with other organizations."

It was nice that Mr. Romero took the time to personally respond to my email inquiry. One thing I've learned is that the ACLU does actually listen, and I give them a lot of credit for that. (Name one corporation where you can email the CEO or President and expect to get a personal, thoughtful reply -- not from a lackey but from the real person -- within 24 hours.)

However, what I was amazed to find is that the ACLU automatically gave my name and address to third parties -- and did it so swiftly that I was already receiving mailings from third parties before I received my ACLU membership packet.

The implication in Mr. Romero's email was that because I put up a fuss, they would remove my name from "the list that is shared" -- had I not put up a fuss, they'd no doubt continue to merrily give my information away.

Fast foward a month. The floodgates had opened wider and I was getting even more junk mail from needy non-profit organizations. I wrote back to Romero and requested that the ACLU notify each and every organization it had given my information to, to immediately cease and desist from sending me stuff, and to remove my name from their lists.

He wrote back a few days later, apologizing again but assuring me that my name had been removed, and, no doubt shrugging as he wrote it, "because of the 'double blind' nature of the name sharing system we take part in, it is impossible for us to know what organizations have received your name."

So I contacted some of these organizations directly. Funny, they knew exactly what organization they got my name from, and told me so: the ACLU. I never told them I'd signed up for the ACLU. But they knew. So much for the "name sharing system" being "double blind."

Well at this point, I gave up. I could have escalated this more, but I had more important things to do. (Which I'm sure relieved the ACLU and the other organizations.)

2. The Renewal Letter
Fast forward to just recently. A form letter arrives from ACLU, complete with dire pleadings to send more money to continue the good fight, et cetera, et cetera. I had not forgiven them for their privacy-violating mass-mailing sins of the past year, and tossed the letter in the trash.

Then, a few weeks later, another letter arrives. Very official-looking white envelope, with only "OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION" and a return address up in the left-hand corner. I opened and there was a form letter from Nadine Strossen, President of ACLU.

"I am writing to you today with a real sense of urgency because we have yet to receive your membership renewal contribution for this year," the letter began, "and because in these challenging times the ACLU is depending upon your support."

It went on about how ACLU's efforts are weakened when members don't renew. Lots of stuff to make you feel guilty. Fine. But then it brought up how our privacy rights are in peril, and it was at that point I was reminded at how the ACLU had violated my privacy when I joined the organization.

So this morning I wrote Nadine Strossen an email:

Dear Ms. Strossen: I received your "real sense of urgency" letter asking for my membership renewal, and I wanted to respond to you directly. I'm not going to renew my ACLU membership at this time. Why? Not because I don't believe in or support the work that the ACLU is doing. The ACLU is needed more than ever given the current War on the Constitution. No, the reason I choose not to renew is because I was deeply disappointed by what happened when I signed up for the ACLU last year. Within days of sending in my $20, a daily barrage of solicitations from dozens of other nonprofit organizations began. The amount of junk mail I received from Sierra Club, Americans for This, Americans for That, etc., was staggering. I'm still getting such junk mail a year later, although it has died down a lot. I had not received any such mail until the very moment I joined ACLU. I was shocked to learn that ACLU had given out my private contact information to what appeared to me to be any organization that wanted it. I can only imagine what multiple of my $20 contribution you earned from these other organizations paying you for my info. Shame on you. I had thought that if there were one organization I could simply assume to automatically protect one's privacy and play fair, it would be the ACLU. Imagine my disappointment when that turned out not to be the case. So, while I support the work of your organization, I can't give you more money because I don't trust what your organization does with its membership info. And I'm warning others to not join or renew either, unless they don't mind the whole world sending them junk mail. Suggestion: change your ways. Then prove to me you've changed your ways. Then I'll be glad to come back. Sincerely, Brian Dear

I sent that at 8:08am this morning (my time; 11:08am New York time). Amazingly, two hours and three minutes later, Nadine Strossen wrote back:

From: "Nadine" <xxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> To: "'Brian Dear'" <xxxxxxx@xxxxxx.xxxxx> Cc: <xxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx>, "'Jennifer Meyer'" <xxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx> Subject: RE: Responding to your ACLU membership renewal letter Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:11:27 -0400 Dear Brian, Thank you so much for writing directly to me -- taking the time to express your important concerns and giving me the opportunity to respond and to rectify. I assure you that the ACLU does "practice what we preach" in terms of privacy and we have scrupulous policies in place to protect you against the kind of junk mail barrage that you're experiencing. As for the details of our policies and practices, I'm forwarding your letter to GINA SCHMELING, who is the ACLU's Membership Director, with the request that she (or someone else she designates) respond to your concern with more concrete details, and to copy me on the answer. You know the old logical fallacy, "Post hoc, propter hoc" -- the fact that (1) you joined the ACLU , and (2) you then got lots of junk mail, doesn't mean that #1 caused #2. I'm not claiming that our policies are perfect -- alas, nothng human is -- so MAYBE something went awry here, but please don't leap to that conclusion. After all, you obviously believe in due process and the presumption of innocence, as a civil libertarian! Please keep an open mind. Again, I'm so grateful to you for speaking up - -but I wouldn't expect anything less of a (former) card-carrier! With warm regards, Nadine -- PS Hope you don't mind being on a first-name basis. I'm a friendly Midwesterner and consider any (former) ACLU member family of sorts! N Nadine Strossen President, American Civil Liberties Union Professor of Law, New York Law School 57 Worth Street New York, NY 10013 212 xxx xxxx; 212 xxx xxxx (F)

Once again, ACLU had impressed me by a) showing they listen to their members and b) responding quickly to inquiries.

3. The Signup Form
I decided to take a look at the ACLU's website before responding to Nadine. I wanted to see if anything had changed since I'd first contacted Anthony Romero. I noticed right away that the privacy policy had been updated. Part of that policy states as follows:

Like most other non-profit membership organizations, the ACLU obtains the names of potential new members by renting the membership lists or subscriber lists of like-minded organizations and publications. Sometimes, instead of paying the rental fee, ACLU exchanges its list with that of another organization.

Whether by exchange or rental, the lists are governed by very strict privacy procedures, as recommended by the U.S. Privacy Study Commission. All exchanges are made on a "blind" basis, as follows: Lists are never given into the physical possession of the organization which has rented or exchanged them. This safeguard is necessary to prevent one organization from knowing who the members of any other organization are. Instead, usually through a list broker, the list, either in the form of labels or tape, is sent to a mail house which prepares the mailing without our ever seeing who is addressed. The only time we get possession of a name from one of these lists is when the person receiving our invitation to join responds by sending our return envelope back to us.

If the receipt of duplicate mailings is too burdensome, you may wish to consider writing to each of the organizations to which you belong and publications to which you subscribe, requesting that your name be eliminated from lists made available for exchange or rental. The ACLU always honors such requests, and we believe that the organizations with which we exchange or rent lists honor them also, although of course we can't guarantee the actions of outside organizations.

They're wrong about that "blind" part, as I'd proven months before by inquiring to some of the organizations that had carpet-bombed me with junk mail, demanding to know how they got my name and address, and receiving timid emails back along the lines of "gee, well, our records show we got your information from the A.C.L.U., sorry to bother you!" So much for blind.

What I was really interested in, however, was the ACLU membership signup form, accessed from the aclu.org website. Here's page one of the form:

The signup form is broken up into three pages ("3 EASY STEPS", as the ACLU terms it): page one is "your info", page two is "payment info", and page three is "confirmation." Here's page two:

And here's the confirmation page:

It's a reasonable, pretty standard way of designing a signup or registration form, and I'm not going to debate its design. What I am concerned about are two things.

• There is no affordance on any of the three pages --- for instance, a checkbox --- that would allow someone to opt in or opt out of the automatic inclusion of their personal information into what Anthony Romero called "the list that is shared with other organizations." There are plenty of very smart people at the ACLU. I don't believe for a second this omission was accidental. (Oh ok, I'm willing a teensy tiny bit to believe it was accidental --- in keeping with my friend N's plea that I keep an open mind.) But it sure does look like the ACLU is saying, "if you want to have the convenience of using our website to join our organization, the price is your privacy." Whether they mean this or not, the omission of an opt-in/out checkbox is flat-out wrong in my view, and contrary to of the one of the fundamental rights the organization claims it is protecting.

• There is no indication what happens if you only fill out page one of the form. Say you diligently fill out your name and address and phone info, and click the "Continue" button. Then you see the credit card page, realize your wallet is in the kitchen, the phone rings, the baby cries, your favorite TV show is back from commercial, whatever --- something makes you decide to either put off filling out the form or stop altogether. Fine. But the ACLU has your name and address and home phone and work phone and email address. You submitted all that when you clicked the "Continue" button on page one. What does the ACLU do with this information? Does it immediately copy it to "the list that we share"? (How much money does the ACLU get from these other organizations, by the way, as a bounty for sharing this info?) There's no clear indication. Not good. Not fair. Not in keeping with the principles of the ACLU in my view.

So, now I was ready to reply to Nadine's email.

4. The Challenge
So here's my reply, sent today at 12:13pm California time:

Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 12:13:21 -0700 To: "Nadine" <xxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> From: Brian Dear <xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx> Subject: RE: Responding to your ACLU membership renewal letter Cc: <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx>, "'Jennifer Meyer'" <xxxxxx@xxxx.xxx> Dear Nadine: Thank you for writing back, I appreciate hearing from you directly, I really do. I signed up for ACLU through the aclu.org website last year, and the real shocker was the sudden (and months-long) bombardment of mailed solicitations from non-ACLU organizations. The typical solicitation consisted of a thick, heavy envelope inside of which were customized "BRIAN DEAR" pens, posters, stickers, stamps, postcards, address books, address labels, envelopes, calendars, 4-color brochures, you name it. The bombardment -- there's no other word for it -- started days after I signed up through the aclu.org website --- and even before my ACLU membership card arrived. Naturally I assumed that signing up for ACLU caused the junk mail. Turns out I was right. How do I know I was right? Well, I contacted Anthony Romero, told him what was happening, asked if there were indeed a connection between all the new junk mail and my joining ACLU, and he admitted that yes, my contact information had immediately been given out to who knows how many other nonprofit organizations. This had been done without my permission or knowledge. He was very courteous and responsive (something I've not forgotten) and had someone within ACLU stop giving my contact info out anymore, but the cat was already out of the bag, and to this day I still get stuff although far less, thank goodness. Here's the thing: while I am glad to see ACLU has clearly improved the aclu.org website's privacy policy since last year, you still don't give new members any option to opt-out of the impending avalanche of dead tree byproducts (ironic indeed how many trees must be cut down to manufacture the stuff that Sierra Club sends!) when they sign up for membership through the website. Just today I went back to the ACLU website and went through the 3-page new-membership signup form to see if that had improved since last year. Nope. There is still no checkbox or other affordance for users to indicate that they simply want to support the ACLU --- period --- and not support, hear from, or have their personal information sent to any other entity anywhere. That is what I mistakenly *assumed* would be the case when I signed up. I suspect thousands of other people assume the same as well. I mean, I think people who come to the aclu.org website to sign up, do so in good faith and assume that ACLU, of all organizations, would not abuse or take advantage of the trust of individuals who believe in the organization and want to help it fight the good fight. By not disclosing, right out in the open, right within the online membership signup form, that ACLU's going to give information out to other entities, I think you do your new members a grave disservice. Would alerting members to your information-sharing practices right within the form, via a simple checkbox saying "I give permission to ACLU to share my name and address to other worthy nonprofit organizations" be such a bad thing? I can't imagine how adding that to the first page of the signup form would harm your new membership signup rates or your overall mission. I also worry about the way you've broken the form up into three pages. As a user-interface designer myself, I can appreciate your trying to simplify the form and save the user from having to scroll down what might be a fairly long page. But the multi-page design of your form makes me wonder: since you gather name and address information on the first page, what happens to that information the moment it's submitted? After all, it has value right away. What happens if someone doesn't type in their credit card on the second page, and thus does not complete the application? Do you keep the info submitted on the first page of the form? Is there any possibility that that information gets released to third parties? In fact, right here and now I pledge to renew my membership and give $50 to the ACLU the day I see its website signup form modified as I've described above. As a web design professional I would be happy to help ACLU make the right design changes to the form so that members are informed about and have complete control over deciding whether their information is strictly for ACLU's use, or may be shared with other organizations. I look forward to your reply. Sincerely, Brian Dear

So there you have it. I'll rejoin ACLU when I see they've made a fix to their site, making it clear to all users that it is up to them to opt in or opt out of the ACLU's sharing of their personal contact information with other organizations.

I will post a follow-up as soon as I've heard back from my new pal Nadine. :-)

UPDATE -- 25 September 2003:
I heard back from Nadine Strossen this morning, thanking me for the detailed explanation. "The situation is in the hands of the ACLU's staff specialists," she says. I will post a new Nettle article once I've find out what the ACLU intends to do about fixing their membership signup sequence so people have a choice of opting in to information-sharing or not.

UPDATE -- 3 October 2003:
Part Two of this ACLU article is now available. Click here to go there now.

UPDATE -- 1 December 2003:
See Part Three of this ACLU story for some great news!!!

The Design of Politics, Part 1: Wesley Clark

[ Part 1 of a Series ]

The nettle blog is going to begin reviewing political websites from a design, user-experience, and information-architecture perspective. Future installments in the series will look at other candidates, other parties, and who knows where this will lead over the next 12 months. . .

by Brian Dear

So on Wednesday, Wesley Clark entered the race as a presidential candidate on the Democratic Party ticket. Since he's in the news, I figured I'd start with him. He's got an official website, and there's an unofficial blog. Let's look at the official site first.

1. Clark's Official Website
So the website is lean, which is understandable, I guess, considering the guy just announced not 24 hours ago. But it's lean kind of the way I think of Clark himself as lean: chiseled features, clean as a whistle, nothing to hide. The site resembles the man.

It shouldn't, if he wants to be able to a) get his message across, and b) get people to do the things (join, give money, etc.) the campaign needs people to do.

Stuff I noticed about this page:

• Top banner logo issue #1: The "Wesley K. Clark" logo is hard to read: The W and the C are lost in that big star in the background. Suggestion #1: Redo the logo completely. Suggestion #2: Lose the middle initial. Too many K sounds already: Wesley k-k-clark for m-m-my g-g-generation. . .

• Top banner logo issue #2: What's up with this weird "/04" stuff next to the word "CLARK"? It's so, I dunno, European or West Point or something. (NATO influence maybe?) Suggestion: replace with "in 2004" in big letters . . . you might get more votes!

  

• Top banner logo issue #3: Funny how there is the suggestion of five stars, in the background of the top banner logo, for this four-star general. Mmm-hmm, just a coincidence, uh-huh. :-)

• The text fonts are way way way too small. Unless you're strictly going for the 18-24 crowd. If you want anyone else to be able to read your site, 8- and 10-point fonts are not the way to do it. Imagine if the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution were designed this way. No more screaming "WHEN" or "WE THE PEOPLE". . . and then where would we be?

• The 100 Year Vision: This links to a separate page, which might better be called "The 10,000 Word Vision." See the photo to the right. Dude: you're not in NATO anymore. No more big thick binders full of reports to publish. Here's what you gotta do ASAP: hire a really good editor, and cut this thing down down to 100 words --- the proverbial elevator speech --- and then hire a web design specialist who can paint that 100-word vision in the browser window in a way that people can glance at and immediately get.

• Perhaps the most important thing wrong with the homepage is that there's no above-the-fold hit-'em-over-the-head message that says he's running for president. Where does it say in big letters "VOTE FOR WESLEY CLARK IN 2004 FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES"? Instead all we've got is this sorta creepy -- in a third-world military junta sort of way --- "MEET THE GENERAL" message. Hi, General. Like, um, it's an honor to, um, to meet you. Um. Now what?

• Congratulations must be extended to MeetUp, Inc.. When can I buy stock?

• It's nit-picky but . . . "Women For Clark" . . . "Students for Clark" . . . "Blacks 4 Clark" . . . "Hispanics Clark"??? Note to Clark organization: you need a lot more links in your Grassroots list, and you might want to review the site names. . .

• The URL is "americansforclark.com" yet the TITLE of the homepage is "America for Clark". At least the campaign went and bought both domains, and they both point to the right place. Good move.

  

• Oh yeah. . . Top banner logo issue #4 (someone pointed this out to me this morning): Um, are those red and white stripes of the U.S. flag on the upper right within the top banner, under the word "Courage", or, is that someone's bare midriff, complete with belly button, and bright red underwear? :-)

2. The Clark Blog.
The design of the blog is, well, typical blog material, but clean, functional, and relatively easy to read despite the gazillion links on the page:

Stuff that caught my attention on the blog page:

• First thing that caught my attention? IMMEDIATELY? The "United for Clark" logo:

  This logo has got to be the weirdest, busiest, most downright violent logo --- political or otherwise --- I've seen since I don't know when. It's like what a U.S. Flag might look like after it's been taken out of a blender. Or maybe while it's still in the blender. (Oh and hey, notice there's five stars again. . . wishful thinking General, but it ain't gonna happen.) I'm not sure what it is supposed to symbolize (America at war? The big fight? World War III?) but the first thing I was reminded of was, ah, the Tasmanian Devil! Who knows? Please prove to me I'm wrong! :-)

• Quick: somebody go register wesleyclarkblog.com and point it to wesleyclarkweblog.com. I got confused. I bet 1,000,000 other people will too.

• The blog site is fairly clean, readable, straightforward. Pluses: the blog entries are short with very obvious links. Easily scannable. Good web reading for the attention-deficit-disorder Internet world.

• The talking head photo of Clark in the upper-right-hand corner is juxtaposed underneath with a Clark 2004 T-Shirt, and it reminds me of those ads where you can cut out different clothes and align them up under the photo of the model. All that's missing are some jeans further down the column under the T-shirt, and some sneakers below the jeans!

• The "Friends of Clark" list on the left-hand column is impressive in its length and density. Of course, it's like a Blogroll which for politicians eventually (if the politician's worth his salt) becomes a 1000-lb Rolodex. The official website above should steal some links from this blogroll for its "Grassroots" section. Hey, stealing links is how the web works...

• Hey: next-billion-dollar-company-idea #5,719: someone ought to create a Friendster-like service for voters . . . call it Votester (don't bother, it's taken), where people can contact other people who plan on voting the same way they do, at which point they can, well, um . . . nevermind.

• Nice to see so many comments appended to each blog entry. Political blogs may wind up crashing these blog systems --- what happens when these things scale to 10,000+ comments? Methinks they will in 2004. At some point the sheer scale of the 'Net will come crashing down on these communities.

• I like how the blog homepage totally downplays the stuff about him being a General. The official site ought to take this to heart.

• Bottom line, whoever's running this blog ought to be congratulated for creating what I think is a good effort: people familiar with blogs and interested in Clark should find lots of useful and timely information here.

Well, that's all for now. It's late. More political website reviews coming soon in part 2.

As always, I invite you to share your comments and observations in the space provided below!

The Design of Politics, the Politics of Design

Given how the 2004 U.S. presidential election activity is already heating up, and how the campaigns of this election will without doubt involve more effort made via the Internet than at any other time in history, including campaign websites and blogs, and given how if you use the web and also happen to think about world affairs and social issues, you can't help but notice all the political web activity . . . it's time to take a look at this phenomenon, from a design perspective.

What does any of this have to do with Nettle, a blog about user experience, design strategy, and the like? I think it has tons to do with it. We've probably all seen at least one political party or campaign website or blog --- they're popping up everywhere. Each of them has its own design, look and feel, organization, and information architecture. It's time for Nettle to take a look at these things, not with any particular political bias, but strictly from a design perspective. What's working? What doesn't? Who has the best graphics? Who has the worst? Over the coming year, Nettle is going to seek answers to these questions.

Stay tuned for more.

About Our New Look: The Netflix Review, Part Eleven

by Brian Dear

This is the eleventh installment in an ongoing series of reviews about the Netflix service. Click here for links to all of the previous installments.

So Netflix launched its "new look." I've had a lot of folks write to me asking if the nettle blog was going to comment about the new look of Netflix. Here are my comments.

1. The Tabs
The very first moment I laid eyes on the "new look", the first thing I noticed was the tabs. And the very first thing I thought, before I read what the words were in the tabs, was this:

What I thought the new tabs were for, at first glance.

I thought, yes! Cool! Awesome! Not only Movies, but AudioBooks! And Video Games! Totally awesome!

Wishful thinking, alas. (But think for a moment how Wall Street would have reacted...) I was really hoping what Netflix was going to roll out was that which I think everybody deep down secretly wants Netflix to roll out: a rental service not just for DVDs, but also for audiobooks and video games. Maybe just video games at first, but certainly both of them eventually.

I have long kept my distance from audiobooks -- avoiding them for the weirdest reasons, like only old people listened to audiobooks, or audiobooks were for the self-help crowd. I literally have never bought an audiobook nor borrowed one from the library -- until this summer.

Prior to two separate very long road trips this summer, I stopped by the library and checked out some nonfiction books-on-tape, biographies and history titles. I was amazed! The hours flew by, and before I knew it, an 8-hour unabridged book was finished, and I was 900 miles further on the Interstate. I was sold. Audiobooks are wonderful --- that is, if the books themselves are wonderful and the person they hire to read them reads wonderfully. I would have preferred audiobooks in the CD format, but my library has a pitifully poor collection of them, so I had to stick with what they offered in cassette tape format.

But it got me thinking: audiobook rentals! Yes! Of course! Why doesn't Netflix rent them? It makes so much sense! The exact same business model --- renting audio CDs, use the same mailers, same postage costs, same inventory system, same, same, same. The only thing that's not the same is the size of the market, I suppose. Ok, so we'll work on that! :-)

You might say, you want audiobooks on the web, try Audible! And I would respond, I have, and I didn't like it, in fact I can't stand Audible. It's not a rental place, it's more like iTunes for books. That may be fine for some people, but not for me. What I want is Netflix for books. You hear me, Netflix? (Update, Sun 7 Sept 2003: See bottom of article for an update on audiobooks for rent.)

As for video games, well that's another natural offshoot of Netflix that again, I suspect everybody is hoping/waiting/expecting Netflix to offer one of these days. I've never owned a video game machine. Ever. Having played enough games on the PLATO system in years past, I know what kind of black hole, time-wise, computer games can be, and I've avoided video games for that reason. But if Netflix offered rentals, I might try them once in a while.

2. Whither Search?
But I digress. The tabbed interface launched as part of Netflix's recent site redesign was not to introduce non-DVD rentals into Netflix's inventory. Instead, it was to make more clear to customers exactly what the three components of the Netflix customers' web experience are: Browsing, Recommendations, and the Queue.

What the new tabs are actually for, at second glance.

There's only one problem.

There are four components to the web experience of Netflix. Not three. Three are indeed Browsing, Recommendations, and Queue.

The fourth one is Search, and Netflix has made what I believe is a big mistake in downplaying the search function of the site.

For example, as many Netflix customers have no doubt discovered, there's no longer a Search box on the Queue page.

And if you're like me (having rated 16,500+ movies on Netflix :-) you'll discover that the Search box is missing from other pages as well, for instance:

"There are no more movies for you to rate." Oh well!

and also here (this is what I see when I actually click on the Recommendations tab, now):

"You need to rate more movies." But there are none to rate!

Yes, that's right, the Recommendations tab becomes useless if you actually rate too many movies. Despite what Netflix tells you ("you need to rate more movies"). I'm going to cut Netflix some slack, a little bit at least, on this point because, after all, how many of its 1.x million customers have rated 16,500+ movies on the site? Probably not many. :-)

But all is not lost. There's a Search box on the Browse page. Whew. (Of course, the Homer Simpson School of Interaction Design: Want to search? Go to browse! D'oh!) But wait:

What I see when I click on the new Browse tab.

There are a couple things that catch my eye right away:

• The first recommended DVD is Untamed Heart, which long ago I had indicated Not Interested. Indeed, the Not Interested button is selected --- Netflix knows this is what I think of that DVD! And yet, Netflix tells me, "brian, based on your recent rentals and ratings, here are a few interesting movies you might enjoy ..." and shows a DVD I have indicated I am NOT INTERESTED IN as the first one in the list. What's up with that!?

• That cutesy colorful box on the right that says "Browse" and "About Our New Look". Um, okay, so what am I supposed to do about this? Click it? So I do. And I get a page talking about how wonderful Netflix's new look is. Guess what, Netflix? This should not take higher priority than Search. That simple. Want to brag about the new look? Fine. Put a link at the bottom of the page. Mention it on in bright flashy letters on the Netflix envelopes that arrive in the mail. But don't push SEARCH down the page. Search is important. I bet quite a few of your 1.x million customers agree with me.

• The navigation column is now on the right. It used to be on the left. Okay, so maybe not a big deal. But then, maybe it is a big deal. Turns out that if your browser window isn't sufficiently wide, you don't even see the navigation column and the search box. Maybe not a problem for most users, but I bet it's a problem for some users.

• The main browse functions have been largely pushed below-the-fold. Partly due to that pesky About Our New Look box and partly because of the space consumed by the cutesy grayed-out photos of CDs in the banner at the top of the page. All that fluff not only pushes down Search, but it pushes down the Browse links, including the Categories (ooh, no longer called "Genres" I see!).

3. Problems on the Individual DVD Detail Pages
Even on individual DVD detail pages, there are issues with the new design.

Potential for confusion: the navigation column

For instance, the new "MOVIE INFORMATION" box in the right-hand navigation column... what does that refer to? The DVD on the page, or some other page? It's color-coded in the same purple as the rest of the Browse motif, so maybe it has to do with any movies. If I click on "Critic Reviews", do I go to a new section of the site containing Critic Reviews? Likewise for Member Reviews, etc. Bottom line, I think there's a big disconnect between the links in this "MOVIE INFORMATION" box and the sections of the page, which, surprise, is what the links actually refer to.

Thank goodness there's a Search box on the movie detail page, by the way.

4. More Thoughts on Search
Two things come to mind about the fate of Search on the new Netflix site redesign.

First, I remember hearing a Netflix executive once tell me that the difference between Blockbuster and Netflix was that Blockbuster was a demand fulfillment business, and Netflix was a demand generation business. In other words, people flocked to Blockbuster to rent stuff they'd been told to rent as a result of the barrage of media advertisements and word-of-mouth. Ooh, the new Men in Black is out! Gotta run to Blockbuster and pick it up. (Note how Blockbuster will have dozens, even scores, of copies of the latest releases, to satisfy --- to fulfill --- that demand.) Netflix, on the other hand, has chosen not to compete with Blockbuster on this front (probably because if the 1.x million customers knew they could all get a copy of, say, Men In Black III, the day it came out, they all would do so, requiring Netflix to buy and stock 1.x million copies. Netflix tries that and adios Netflix. :-)

If you drink the demand generation kool-aid, you become a true believer in recommendations, and you build the business around them. That means throw relevant titles at the customer and hopefully within a click here and a click there, the customer will find something worth renting and click the "rent" button. Mission accomplished.

Demand generation suggests the emphasis be placed on browsing and recommendations rather than finding. No wonder, then, there's no tab for searching at the top of Netflix site pages now. I'm not necessarily recommending that there ought to be a Search tab. But I am thinking that Netflix has made a major miscalculation with the release of this new site redesign, and by de-emphasizing search, theoretically to more emphasize browse and recommendations, they're going to dismay, confuse, and frustrate a considerable percentage of their 1.x million customers. Like me, for starters.

I am a Netflix customer who sometimes doesn't want to browse because I know what I want and when I know what I want, I want Netflix to find it for me fast. Finding is accomplished through Searching, so the first thing I gotta to is search for the search box. In the "New Look", that requires more work than in the "old design". When some pages don't even have Search boxes on them, what do I click? Browse? Recomendations? Queue? Ugh.

Because Search has been relegated to second-class-citizen status, it gets bumped around on the new site. The risk one runs when one sticks variable-length content above something fundamental like Search in the navigation column is that the Search box MOVES. Moves DOWNWARD, inevitably. This is bad.

Why is it bad? Because Search is fundamental ---- something you don't mess with. Imagine if Google moved its Search box around on its home page and its other pages. World War III. Same with Yahoo.

By messing with its exact screen location from web page to web page on the site, Search is no longer a familiar function to users. Users can no longer habituate to it. The user-interface to Search stops being a simple mouse gesture --- an invisible, rote, mindless movement of the hand, as in the hand knows what to do --- but instead becomes something users have to focus attention on. Guess what: user interfaces are supposed to be invisible, mindless, requiring as little attention as possible to get something done. I think Netflix has violated this fundamental rule of design. Imagine if the turn signal in your car kept moving around. You come to an intersection, your eyes focused straight ahead at the goings on in the intersection, your hand reaching out for the turn-signal knob, and not finding it! "Sorry, at this intersection, the knob is six inches further down the steering column!" D'oh!

That's all for now. Please comment below. Did you find this interesting, infuriating, or incoherent? Let me know. Thanks.

UPDATE, 7 Sept 2003: Just a little update regarding the audiobook rentals a la Netflix. I noticed one of the Google ads above was for Books On Tape, Inc. Turns out they do something close to Netflix for audiobooks. 30 day rentals, you select titles through the website, then they mail them to you in a mailer which you return when you're done.