Redesign the mobile experience of Recommendations for mobile-first viewers

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Netflix is a streaming entertainment company; its products include subscription video, original films and series, recommendations, profiles, games, and ad-supported plans.

Netflix wants to improve how mobile-first viewers discover what to watch through Recommendations. These users primarily browse, decide, and often watch on a phone, in short sessions, across different network conditions, languages, content catalogs, and household contexts. The current recommendation experience may work well for TV-based lean-back viewing, but mobile users often face smaller screens, faster context switching, limited attention, and higher competition from short-form and social video apps.

Your task is to redesign the mobile recommendation experience for Netflix’s mobile-first audience. Focus on the end-to-end discovery workflow: opening the app, understanding what is being recommended, evaluating whether a title is worth watching, resuming or saving content, and moving from browsing to playback. Consider how recommendations should adapt across entertainment formats such as series, films, live content, games, and ad-supported viewing contexts where relevant.

Do not focus only on visual layout. The stronger product design discussion should clarify the target user segment, their needs and constraints, the discovery frictions they experience today, and what the redesigned experience must enable for both the viewer and Netflix.

The experience should consider:

- Mobile-first viewing behaviors, including short sessions, one-handed use, commuting, low bandwidth, and frequent interruptions

- Recommendation clarity: why a title is suggested, whether it matches the user’s mood, language, time available, or viewing history

- Reducing choice overload while still preserving Netflix’s depth of catalog and personalization

- Support for global and localized discovery, including subtitles, dubbing, regional content, and shared-device households

- How the experience competes with fast, engaging discovery patterns from YouTube, TikTok, and other streaming apps without simply copying them

- Transitions from recommendation to action, such as play, preview, download, save, share, remind me, or continue watching

- Trust, safety, and user control around personalization signals, maturity settings, and recommendation feedback

- Success indicators such as discovery satisfaction, title starts, completion quality, retention, and reduced browsing abandonment

The goal is to define a thoughtful mobile recommendation experience that helps Netflix users quickly find something they genuinely want to watch while strengthening engagement, personalization trust, and long-term subscription value.