Slashdot Mirror
Evolution of the Netflix Envelope
An anonymous reader wrote to mention an article over on CNN Money. They go into some detail on what seven years of tinkering has done for the simple red Netflix envelope. From the article: "Years of experimentation went into creating the perfect DVD envelope. In 1999, Netflix started out with a heavy cardboard mailer. With only 100,000 subscribers, costs weren't a concern yet. Then the company experimented with plastic envelopes, which proved not to be recyclable, and padding, which added too much to postage costs. Both top-loading and side-loading envelopes made an appearance."
Imagine shipping 1 billion DVDs for one cent cheaper.
As a long-time netflix user I think the paper envelope they have now is damn near perfect. It's dirt cheap, but keeps the DVD safe. It's recycleable too. It takes 5 seconds to put the DVD in securely and be ready to mail it.
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For those of you who think that there hasn't been much technological progress since, say, 1980 (except perhaps computers which are special*), this is how it happens. Take this sort of incremental improvement by one company in one very small facet of our lives, and multiply it across any number of thousands of products, carefully trimmed and optimized and made more efficient. You only notice the things that the process isn't very good at; UI, for instance.
(*: And computers only seem special for two reasons: One, most fields don't get to experience exponential growth for decades at a time, and two, you know more about them. There's a lot going on under the hood of any number of other products, too. Familiarity breeds contempt; so does ignorance.)
I guess it's just the idea that incremental progress is quite fascinating when you look at it all at once.
That said, I also think it would be cool to see something on the evolution of slashdot interfaces,
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
You may not have to be an engineer to send a letter, but to design an envelope that protects the DVD being sent while minimizing cost and customer frustration is quite a bit more complicated than simply sending a letter.
By continually evaluating and optimizing their envelopes, Netflix has been able to both save quite a bit of money (as someone above pointed out, saving 1 cent on every envelope adds up quick when you're sending out millions of envelopes a year) and design a sturdy envelope that is remarkably simple and easy to use. Good design should never be laughed at.