By Himanshi Gupta
If you look around, you will find a massive audience for the OTT platforms. Especially during the pandemic period when people are trying to stay indoors as much as possible, the demand for the OTT platforms has taken a sudden rise. While there are many OTT platforms available, but Amazon, Netflix, and Hotstar have remained on top.
It is undeniable that all three OTT giants have a sound library of series and movies available for everyone’s taste. But that’s not the only reason why these three have been at the top of their game. It’s not just the content that matters but also the way it is presented. Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar have maintained a good User Interface (UI) for their audience to be able to navigate the series and the movies to watch easily.
At the same time, all three of these platforms offer a different UI experience to their customers. Before we study user interfaces for Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar, we must know what UI is.
What Is A User Interface?
Whenever you use your phone or your desktop or anything digital, everything looks a certain way. In most cases, you don’t really have a hard time figuring out what icon is for what because the way it is presented to you says it all.
For example, when you use your smartphone and you want to make a call. You would see an icon which shows the image of a telephone, and that’s how you know that you are supposed to click on it to call someone. Another example would be when you want to send a text message, and there is an envelope-shaped icon on your phone. The icons are designed in such a way that it informs you that the envelope-shaped icon is for sending text messages.
All of this is called the User Interface (UI). The aim is to make your experience smooth, easy to understand and shouldn’t involve too much effort to get the desired outcome. And not only with computers or phones but with websites as well.
As necessary, it is for the computers and the phones to work hard on their UI, and it is equally essential for the websites to do the same as well. The way websites interact with the users is very different from the way smartphones do. The whole aim for having the perfect UI for websites is to convince the customers they are better in the market than anybody else, even if the interaction doesn’t last too long.
Similar is the case with OTT websites as well. When a UI Designer sits to design a perfect OTT platform, the idea is to present the content in such a way that makes the user want to watch them all. With three giants in the same field; Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar, the UI competition can be a little challenging. But they all have their pros and cons for the users.
Amazon Prime Video User Interface
Amazon Prime Video has been an enormous success so far. It is a direct competitor to other OTT platforms like Netflix and Hotstar. With all the prime benefits added, and the content is provided to the customers, Amazon has received a lot of users in the past few years.
It features not only some of the original hit series like The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, The Boys, etc. but also some of the other hit series like The Farewell, The Handmaiden and a lot more. But content and the benefits are not the only things that draw people to use Amazon Prime Video. A lot of it also comes from the user interface they have built to ease the process and the experience of the users. At the same time, people have complained about a couple of things about the way the website works.
When it comes to Amazon Prime Video, the UI controls are either on the corners or in the middle of the screen. You can easily see play/pause and forward/backwards by 10 seconds are in the middle. And the rest are spread across four corners. They all are of an apparent size too. This only goes to show that they have prioritized the most used icons in the middle of the screen, so the user doesn’t have to keep locating them.
In the top-left corner of the prime video is the X-ray option which shows the actors and the music being played in the scene. At the same time, when you are done with watching a movie or a series, you get a tiny video box in the bottom-right corner of your screen. It shows a recommendation for the next movie or the series that you can binge on. However, the font is too small to be read, and the user doesn’t really know what to expect.
Besides, the aesthetic part of the Amazon Prime Video is pretty sober. The overall theme is warm blue which makes the website look a bit sober. It doesn’t really enhance the colours for the other movies/series posters.
However, Netflix has a different yet similar UI for their users.
Netflix User Interface
Netflix, on the other hand, is a bit different from Amazon Prime Video when it comes to UI. They have a massive library of series and movies that you can binge-watch on. All the series and movies are clearly divided amongst various genres. One thing that has been highly appreciated by many users is their colour scheme. They have chosen black and red for the theme of the website. And it enhances the promotional videos on the website.
Talking about the UI for Netflix, the buttons for play/pause and forward/backwards are the same as Amazon Prime. But they are placed in the bottom part of the video. At the same time, Netflix allows you to switch between different seasons from the bottom panel. Once you are done with one episode, the next one starts to play within a few seconds. And after you are done with the series, the post-credits take little space over the screen. As the recommended series or the movie is clearly displayed to the user.
In the new update, you can now control the speed of your scenes as well. You can choose to increase or decrease the speed by which the video is streaming. In case, the video is not working, and it lets you give feedback as well.
Hotstar User Interface
Hotstar got into the OTT business pretty late (in 2011) than Amazon Prime Video (2006) and Netflix (1997). But still, the company has been able to make a big name for themselves across the world and is competing at par with the rest of the OTT giants.
Hotstar (now Disney+ Hotstar) has kept their UI simple as compared to Netflix and Amazon. It has five sections, mainly Home, Disney+, Sports, News and TV. The Home section shows you the new series that are available for you and other recommendations based on your taste. The Disney+ tab is all about Disney series and movies. The sports one shows you all the sports telecasts, including IPL. The news tab shows you various news channels. The last one, the TV tab shows you the TV serials available on the platform. Similar UI is used in the Hotstar mobile app as well.
The colour scheme is dark blue, which enhances the show and series recommendation on the website. The UI panel is at the bottom of the streaming video. It allows you to move to the next episode while you are viewing it on the full-screen feature. But if you want to move a couple of episodes, you will have to go off the full-screen feature. And then you have to scroll down to check the episodes. But other than that, the Hotstar UI is pretty simple and easy to understand.
Which OTT Has A Better UI?
After understanding the user interface for Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Hotstar, it does seem like Netflix has a better UI than the rest of platforms. As per the UI of Netflix, it allows the content to shine better than their background. This further pops out its colours and lets the user concentrate on the promotional video instead of the background also because other features like navigation and the UI panel is more comfortable than the rest.
