(but may be forgetting)

It would be hard to build a product as lacking in basic features and user experience as HBO Now if you understood the real job that users hire streaming video services to do.

Understanding why users would use your product is the key to making sure you build a product that is a good user experience. The job that you are building for is often not as obvious as you think.

In the case of streaming video, prestige TV is far down the list. First up is something to pass the time when people are bored and a way for people to unwind and relax. And people have more options than ever before to unwind and pass the time.

This is why Facebook built a big video channel. Nobody goes to Facebook for prestige content.

Bored? Fire up the Facebook app and get lost in some random video that is bite-size built for filling lulls in your life. The videos work on mobile on up to desktop and feature an algorithm that learns your taste to serve you more and more relevant content to get you to come back more and more.

HBO Now has none of this. It recommends nothing to me. Hell, I can barely access the stuff I know I want to access.

Due to the unintuitive nature of the app and the lack of content discovery features, I actively avoid the app unless I know exactly what I want to watch — usually a new episode of a specific TV show. But even then I have to wade through a broken user interface.

My kids love Sesame Street. Getting to the latest Sesame Street episode is a chore, especially with our Apple TV remote. Pressing down takes me to the oldest season — not the newest! And then once I navigate to the latest season, the episodes are in chronological order and it doesn’t put a marker around the last episode if watched (and move me to there automatically). I have to scroll through the entire season every time I want to watch the latest episode.

Doing something as basic as watching the latest episode of a children’s show becomes a chore that can result in angry kids. Fundamentally, if you are a streaming video service and you make the act of streaming video a chore, you’re setting yourself and your users up for failure.

HBO has a monster back catalog of shows. Recommend me something! The HBO Now home screen is lifeless and looks like it was put together by the marketing department and not product designers.

I care about none of this stuff, and it has nothing to do with my interests or previous viewing habits. There is a complete lack of focus on delivering a good user experience in this screenshot.

Contrast HBO’s prestige content focus with Netflix’s focus on competing for attention. Netflix CEO Reed Hasting doesn’t really view HBO as a core competitor. Instead, this is what he sees:

“Sometimes employees at Netflix think, ‘Oh my god, we’re competing with FX, HBO, or Amazon, but think about if you didn’t watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There’s such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect–and we compete with all of that.”

This lines up perfectly with the theory of jobs to be done. Streaming video services are competing with Facebook quizzes, Twitter threads, Instagram stories, bottles of wine, happy hours, sports on TV, Candy Crush, going for a run, Peleton, and pretty much anything that people do to relax.

This is critical to understand. Because if you think you are competing just on content and not on experience, you’ll build products that people only want to use when you have the exact content they want. Don’t have that content? They’ll cancel.

Low and behold, this is one of HBO’s big issues now. Game of Thrones, their last big prestige show, is now over. Many people canceled their HBO plans because of it. HBO Now is not an enjoyable product to use if you are looking to relax and waste some time.

That might be too kind. HBO Now is a terrible experience.

I viewed my time with HBO Now as a necessary evil to watch Game of Thrones and a few other shows. Without content that I really care about, why would I continue buying HBO? What job does a streaming service that is hard to use, that doesn’t surface content for me, that lacks a big catalog, and that lacks must-have content have in my or your life?

Conversely, Netflix rarely has must-have content, but it’s such a pleasure just to use the service that I have kept it in my life for many, many years. I never think of canceling it. Sometimes, I will just surf around Netflix, watching previews, and finding stuff to watch in the future when I have a few minutes to kill.

Netflix is an enjoyable experience to use, even when you aren’t actually watching anything. The sheer act of scrolling through all of the shows, discovering new stuff, watching previews, and adding to your view list is fun.

HBO Now is a difficult to use experience even when you know exactly what you want to watch, and if you don’t know what you want to watch, firing up HBO Now is an exercise in masochism.

This Second Measure chart shows the power of experience versus content. Netflix has the best retention because it has the best experience. HBO Now has the lowest retention rate of the major streaming platforms that is highly dependent on content.

Understanding the job to be done is critical to understanding what to build and why. If you think the job to be done is to serve up high-quality content, you’ll optimize for that. You’ll view your competitors as other TV networks and streaming services. But if you view your job to be done as providing a way for people to unwind, you’ll view your world of competitors much, much bigger.

Even the context of what competition is changing radically. If relaxing and finding ways to occupy bits of free time are jobs to be done, then a streaming service would want to make sure its phone apps are really strong. Just focusing on apps for Apple TVs and Rokus would really miss a lot of contexts.

The other core problem with focusing on prestige content is that you have to have it for that strategy to make any sense. HBO doesn’t have many must-have shows right now (and perhaps none). It has some interesting shows that are coming to an end. It has some flawed and unique shows. But it doesn’t have a Game of Thrones right now, and it might not for awhile.

Netflix has never had a Game of Thrones. It’s never really tried to. It probably should get some more prestige content, but its strategy of focusing on competing much bigger than just video has made Netflix an indispensable part of millions of people’s lives.

You may have heard that Netflix lost some U.S. subscribers, and growth is slowing. You may also feel the experience is slipping, and you are less happy.

Why? Netflix has lost some of the thread on some of what they should be doing. There can be a fine line between a robust content lineup and so much content that people get overwhelmed and can’t make decisions.

Here is Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice:

“All of this choice has two effects, two negative effects on people. One effect, paradoxically, is that it produces paralysis rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all.

I’ll give you one very dramatic example of this, a study that was done of investments in voluntary retirement plans. A colleague of mine got access to investment records from Vanguard, the gigantic mutual fund company, of about a million employees and about 2,000 different workplaces. What she found is that for every 10 mutual funds the employer offered, rate of participation went down two percent. You offer 50 funds — 10 percent fewer employees participate than if you only offer five. Why? Because with 50 funds to choose from, it’s so damn hard to decide which fund to choose, that you’ll just put it off till tomorrow, and then tomorrow and then tomorrow and tomorrow, and, of course, tomorrow never comes.”

Too much choice causes paralysis in people. Netflix has way too much content. It is releasing way too much original content each month, and it doesn’t have a good way for users to make sense of it.

It’s almost impossible to track what is coming out and what you should care about. Netflix does not offer a robust way to discover new content.

One huge problem is that Netflix removed user ratings, which I relied heavily on to tell me what was worth watching. Instead, it shows me a rating of whether or not Netflix thinks this content matches up with my interests.

That’s not nearly enough. There is a lot of content that matches up with my interests, except its garbage, and watching garbage is not in my interest.

Netflix’s removal of an easy way to see what other users think is good content has made it hard for me to figure out what to watch, especially amongst Netflix’s huge deluge of original content.

Users rely on feedback from other users to make decisions, and Netflix has removed this. Imagine Ebay or AirBnB without user ratings. Netflix has broken a foundational user experience concept of the Internet. A concept that is especially critical as they do more original content and rely less on well-known shows from established production companies.

What I now find myself doing is finding stuff that looks like it could be interesting and then googling for reviews and recommendations about it. I rely heavily on Rotten Tomato, IMDB, and reviews around the Internet to figure out if a Netflix original show is worth my time. This is a stunning amount of friction, and I have found my consumption of Netflix content plummeting.

Imagine if YouTube did away with view counts, thumbs ups, and thumbs down. Original content from non-established creators would be really hard to trust and viewership would plummet. The whole ecosystem that supports YouTubers would collapse, and only content from established mainstream companies would flourish.

Most users rely on other users to help us know what is good. Amazon reviews are indispensable. The ratings on the iTunes Store are incredibly helpful, and Apple’s putting user ratings next to Rotten Tomatoes ratings are incredibly useful. This is what I wish Netflix would do.

It would be so empowering for users.

A core tenant of jobs to be done or any good product framework is that we should empower our users.

Netflix can get back on track by focusing on the experience more. I suspect the removal of any kind of user ratings from Netflix is to protect its original content from poor ratings. But protecting its original content and trying to get users to view it isn’t the core job to be done.

The other big thing that Netflix can do is introduce a content browsing interface that allows users to use detailed filtering to get at content better. As these platforms get more and more content, they need to bring over interaction design concepts from other contexts will be critical.

For HBO, the issue is simple: Focus on the experience. Create an experience that people will enjoy regardless of the content.

Then when you combine that with HBO’s strong original content you’ll have a winning formula. Disney+ has shot onto the scene and combined HBO’s heavily curated catalog with some of Netflix’s stronger user experience, and it’s a winning combination.

Content is not king. Experience is.