Amazon is rolling out a new Prime Video UI. This one should be much more familiar to streaming users;
Amazon introduces a new interface for its service Prime Video, an interface that should be familiar to those who use Netflix or, more generally, any modern streaming service. To make the Prime Video experience “less cluttered and overwhelming,” the company changed the location of the main navigation bar, moving it to the left of the screen, and rearranged the icons into a column. From top to bottom, the six menus are Search, Home, Store, Live TV, Free, and My Stuff.
Amazon is rolling out a new Prime Video UI
Most menus have subcategories to simplify navigation. For example, the Home section has Movies, TV Shows, and Sports subcategories. Other Netflix-inspired features include a top 10 popular content and previews that expand to provide a quick view as you hover over it.
Perhaps the most useful change, however, is Amazon’s introduction of a new icon set that simplifies the indication of embedded content in Prime Video. A small blue tick means the series or movie is included with the subscription. Conversely, a golden shopping bag means that said content must be purchased or rented.
This one should be much more familiar to streaming users
According to The Verge, Amazon spent 18 months on this redesign. Ben Smith, vice president of product for Prime Video and Prime Studios, spearheaded the operation. He had notably worked on the redesign of Hulu in 2017. This had allowed the platform to test something radically different before returning to a more familiar design a few years later.
Amazon will begin rolling out this new Prime Video experience within the week. This one will arrive first on Android and compatible streaming devices – Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, etc. – before coming to iOS and the web later this year.
This new experience, however, will not arrive on all devices that have Prime Vide today. The third generation Apple TV and the Sony PlayStation 3, for example, will not be entitled to it. Applications will remain operational, of course, but users will have to make do with the current interface.