In a few years the traditional way of watching television has changed; today it is the public who has the power to choose what they see within a wide variety of programming options provided by the platform they decide to use.

Without a doubt, Netflix is the most chosen by people around the world, and that has an explanation, the initiative of this company and its power of innovation. 

This audiovisual content platform stands out for breaking traditional entertainment paradigms compared to its competitors.

To generate a great impact with a new disruptive business model, Netflix began searching for something new and different to offer its customers.

This is how Netflix is built: 

The  American entertainment company and subscription service with a constantly growing catalog in streaming, was founded in 1997 in California.

It began with its main service: the distribution of content through the online platform. 

But before that it was a DVD rental company that delivered movies by post.

The story tells in the book Netflixed: the Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs that Reed Hastings rented the movie Apollo 13 from the Blockbuster video store chain. When he returned it a few days late, he had to pay a fine of $40. 

Resigned, Hastings decided to create a chain of video stores free of fines and commitments. Its co-founder, Marc Randolph, says that the idea arose from the desire to start an e-commerce business that would eventually choose DVDs as its product.

And so it was until 2002.

•  Netflix was a virtual video store where customers chose movies through an online platform.
• Its name originates from “Net”, an abbreviation for internet, and flix from “flicks”, a colloquial form in English that means movies.

Viewing service via streaming

In 2007, Netflix introduced the first transformation that was a streaming service, since they realized that renting videos by mail, over the years, was going to stop being profitable and would most likely be replaced by downloading or viewing online. 

• Netflix's goal with the streaming service was to offer a functional platform at all times, allowing a large number of people to view it at the same time, without affecting the quality of the image. This was thought out due to the fear that the platform's network that connected millions of users around the world would be saturated.

• To achieve this, Netflix is allying itself with Amazon computer services, another currently very popular platform that also distributes entertainment content and generates original products of its creation.

From this moment on, the Netflix platform gained great importance and recognition for the unlimited, personalized and advertising-free access it offered.

In addition, it allowed the creation of different profiles between people who shared the password for the same account, a situation that Netflix took advantage of to obtain various data about these people and better understand their tastes. 

In 2011 Netflix began its production of its own content, it would be launched in 2013 with House of Cards- and after the launch of its studio in 2016, Netflix was defined by 2018 as a "global internet TV network" or a global internet television chain. 

Netflix: a disruptive business model

Something disruptive produces a rupture in the development of the activity of a sector to promote a radical renewal, which is precisely the feat that Netflix performed when dethroning the leader of video rentals, Blockbuster, when it presented to the world a new business model adapted to the internet and online content.

The importance of customer comfort: 

Although Blockbuster had a huge number of physical store branches available for its customers to rent in person, little by little people found it comfortable and beneficial to order their rentals from a digital platform.

While Netflix executives understood that they were saving a lot of money on infrastructure by supporting their virtual business.

It goes without saying how this story ended. As if this were not enough, the pandemic era did nothing more than monopolize Netflix's leadership position, keeping people expectant of its programming around the world.

The new strategy implemented by Netflix: Design Sprint

In 5 days Netflix carried out work that helped improve its offer with a new update.

10 Netflix users were interviewed, the majority generally gave a positive opinion about their experience. However, when asked for ideas on how to improve the product, many mentioned performance issues or that they wished there were more programs they liked.

While no clear direction was obtained based simply on talking to users, it was  gained an important insight by studying their habits regarding how they consume Netflix in general.

Data that was used extracted from the Design sprint:

• 90% of users frequently recommend series and movies to their friends.
• 50% share their accounts with people outside their homes.
• 80% do “marathons” watching more than 2 movies or episodes of a series per session. 

To continue, a competitive analysis of products similar to Netflix was carried out. Comparing core features to see if there were any gaps we could address or features we could add.

Focusing the comparison on 3 products: Amazon Prime, Disney Plus and Hulu. Since these were the most popular streaming products, based on total number of subscribers.

It was seen that there were not many differences in terms of features between the competitors, because they are all up to date with the latest trends. However, there was one gap that had not been covered by any product: shared watchlists.

Shared lists fit perfectly with a user's need to recommend content to their friends.

It is a reality, users already do this and they do it in person or through social networks, but it arose  The question: Is there a way to get this functionality within Netflix to create a more holistic viewing experience for users? 

The challenge was to distinguish each user, since Netflix contains several within the same email address. For this you need a tool that automatically generates a unique ID for each user.

Also add a screen that is designed to share lists, recommendations to friends, with the same design coherence that the platform already has.

The final prototype was made and is the next update that will be seen on Netflix:

Lists shared with your friends.

To know more about this new function, keep reading our articles, we will tell you more.

In short, the Netflix case is living proof that we must  take advantage of an opportunity, based on the detection of a weakness in the traditional business model and make history with a new disruptive business model completely based on the internet. 

Netflix is considered the main internet entertainment service in the world. It has a presence in more than 190 countries, where 125 million customers have access and enjoy TV series, movies, documentaries. 

And the best of all is that people can watch the content they want whenever they want, on any electronic device and without ads.

Even so, Netflix continues to bet on changes and growth in the way it offers its services, taking risks and updating every year.

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