The New Hulu App Design Sucks

Summary

The author of the article expresses strong dissatisfaction with the recent redesign of the Hulu app, criticizing its loss of basic functionality, lack of user-friendliness, and annoying new features.

Abstract

In a recent update, Hulu has overhauled its app interface, which has been met with significant disapproval from at least one user. The author argues that while the new design is aesthetically pleasing with its pastel colors and translucent backgrounds, it has sacrificed essential functions and ease of use. The update has removed the ability to turn off autoplay, made it difficult to navigate to continue watching a series, and has introduced a confusing home screen that lacks personalization. The author also notes the unintuitive process to check for new episodes and the app's tendency to play unrelated content automatically. These changes have led to a level of frustration that has the author considering canceling their long-standing subscription.

Opinions

The new Hulu app design is visually appealing but has lost critical functionalities.
Autoplay cannot be disabled in the new app, which is a significant inconvenience.
The app's usability has decreased, with basic actions like finding out if a new episode is available now requiring multiple steps.
The "Home" screen no longer features the user's shows, requiring navigation to separate sections for a personalized viewing experience.
The app now plays content unrelated to the user's interests, which is intrusive and unwanted.
A mysterious bug causes the app to skip forward 10-15 minutes after ads, with no solution provided by Hulu support.
The app's loading times have increased, further frustrating the user experience.
The author feels deceived by the app's unchanged green icon, which belies the significant changes in the app's functionality and interface.
The overall sentiment is that the new Hulu "experience" is disappointing and has prompted the author to question their loyalty to the service.

I hate it. I hate it so much.

Hulu updated it’s app this week after years of having the same layout, and while it’s certainly pretty, it has lost almost all basic functionality.

I looked it up on Hulu’s website, and NO, there is NOT a way to turn off autoplay. You cannot disable it on the new app.

Your Hulu app probably updated automatically, and you woke up to pastel colored translucent backgrounds. Which are…fine, I guess.

The real problem is that it’s basically useless.

Things Hulu no longer does:

Tell you when a new episode is available of something you watch.

Have a your “continue watching” list available with no clicks.

Show a list of “similar shows” on the same page as whatever you’re watching.

Make it easy to use.

Stop playing things after your episode is complete.

Things Hulu does do:

Show only one TV show or movie on the screen at once when looking for a list

Automatically play something completely unrelated that you’ve never searched for if there isn’t another episode of your show

Randomly jump forward 10–15 minutes after the a set of ads. This has happened to me almost every single episode of anything I’ve watched since it updated and I am not able to find anything that can explain it. Including Hulu support.

Still have a green app icon, completely deceiving you into thinking it’s the same and easy to use.

Have a “Home” screen that has none of your shows on it. You must click over to either “My Stuff” or “Keep Watching” (two different locations and two different lists!).

Take forever to load.

Require you to actually click 3–4 times to see if you’ve watched episodes of things (1. Click on the 3 dots of the show you want. 2. Click on ‘Go to Series Details.’ 3. Click on “Episodes” at the top. Scroll down and see, if in correct season, if not, change season then scroll.)

And for an episode description, that’s a 5th click

Make me hate it.

The new Hulu “experience” is not intuitive, not particularly attractive, and is actually making me think about cancelling the service, even though I have been a member for several years and enjoy the variety of shows offered.

Ahhhhhhhhh, dang it. I cancelled cable a couple of years ago, and have happily enjoyed Hulu and Netflix in it’s absence.

This sucks.

Have you had any issues with Hulu recently? What are your thoughts on the update?

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