App Teardown: What Amazon Prime Video gets wrong (and right) — with Jumoke Ajidahun
Hey friends,
A few nights ago, Jumoke Ajidahun and I sat down to do what friends in tech love to do - overanalyze a streaming app like it owes us royalties. This time, we picked Amazon Prime Video and walked through Jumoke’s subjective opinion of it. We found great reach, decent originals, and somehow... a UI that feels like it was designed during a board meeting.
Here’s what we uncovered in our teardown: the good, the bad, and the “how did this get shipped?”
Watch the teardown here:
Teardown notes
Discovery seems Broken
Jumoke’s take:
They (series) are hard to find! In fact, it's the last place that I go to search for something to watch. . I only come here to watch what I have been told can only be found here.
Prime Video buries gems under layers of visual complexity and clutter. Rows of recommendations feel algorithmically generic. Top 10 label? but where is the full list?
What we’d fix:
Clean up the categories. Less noise, more intent.
Give us an actual Top 10 section, not just a badge.
Surface the “Continue Watching” row up top. It’s 2025—don’t make me dig for it.
Make search work for non-English titles
Accurate tagging of movies for better and more up-to-date discovery of similar movies
The skip slider controls — clunky, not clever
Jumoke’s take:
Wow! skip controls feels... stiff on TV! Sometimes I tap once and it jumps a minute, other times, it ignores me completely.How can I fast-forward and reverse with precision using the TV remote and slider?
In 2025, we expect better skip controls options. Scrubbing through content should feel intuitive and smooth especially when you’re rewatching or trying to find that scene. But here? It’s trial and error every time.
What we’d add:
Responsive, fine-tuned skip gestures on TV
Better frame previews while scrubbing (Netflix has had this for years).
Audio & subtitles: Why so complicated?
Switching audio or subtitles on Prime Video feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube mid-episode. The options exist—but understanding the toggles them takes way more steps than it should.
Both’s take:
"It shouldn’t take this much brainpower just to change the language I want to watch my movie in."
Accessibility shouldn’t feel like a hidden feature.
What we’d fix:
Fewer taps to toggle subtitles or change audio.
Visual cues that actually show what's currently selected and what it does for the user’s watch experience
What Prime Video does well
Let’s give credit where it’s due.
Global catalog: Surprisingly deep in international content, if you’re patient enough to dig.
Multiple user profiles: Relatively recent but essential addition, to let households personalize experiences without blending watch histories.
Final thoughts
Amazon Prime Video isn’t the top streaming platform because of content, it’s one of the popular streaming platforms despite content.
For Jumoke, if they focused on catalog classification and quality of UX they could do better. But for now, it feels like a product optimized for Amazon’s priorities of competing within that space with something that just works ok, not the user's viewing pleasure.