Why an Airport Is Like Netflix

Arriving at Newark Airport, I have to navigate a path to my flight.

Selecting Netflix for tonight’s movie, I have to decide what to watch.

More than I realize, architecture takes me to each destination.

Navigating an Airport

Hired by airport designers, wayfinders are the individuals who use architecture, signage, lighting and color to take us from Terminal A to Terminal D. They create paths for people through angled counters. Or, in a mostly monochromatic space, they could use one color that pops to identify a crucial service.

At Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, Mijksenaar, a Dutch wayfinder, made it easier for us to remember where we parked. Instead of a letter and a number like B23, they used graphics:

Choosing a Movie

Elevating its total to 301 million, Netflix added a whopping 19 million subscribers during the fourth quarter of 2024.

One reason for their success is how they help us choose.

First though, they get to know us. They know that weekdays we tend to watch TV shows while weekends are for movies. Netflix knows what we watched, where we paused, what device we used. They are aware of when we binge, our searches, browsing, ratings.

Netflix observed that if we don’t hit play in 53 seconds, we move on. As a result, they know they have to help us decide through a default or a catchy brief tag. In a January 2024 article, the NY Times said Netflix had 30 taggers. Working together in one room, their job is to select several words per film. They’ve debated whether falling in love. looking for love, or finding love is best and concluded all three were fine:

I would head straight to this one:

But not this film:

Amassing their data points, they know (before we do), what we want. On our end, it is easy.

Our Bottom Line: Architecture

Whether it is physical architecture or choice architecture, intentionally designed invisible structures nudge us along a decision path. With airports we receive architectural clues from color, shapes, images. Meanwhile, with movies, behavioral economists say we respond to choice architecture.

At airports and at home, designers can use architecture to minimize our decision fatigue. Barack Obama told Michael Lewis that he wore a gray suit every day to save his energy for the important stuff. Leaving a mall, the big shoppers could do fewer math problems than those that shopped less. Car dealers know to give us option packages rather than a long list of alternatives.

Behavioral economists like to tell us that sometimes more is less. We pay a biological price for making decision after decision. Depleted, our brain is tired.

Seeing the gargantuan number of titles in a Netflix library, we need their choice architecture:

My sources and more: Reading about the Netflix use of tags, I realized the decision fatigue connection. Then, Wired and this (perhaps out-) dated source had more about the data they need to assist our decision-making. However, if you just want to learn about wayfinders, econlife told more of what they do.

(Please note that because some of my sources are several years old, I’ve assumed that Netflix has improved what I cite. Generally describing their choice architecture, though, it is accurate. Also, several of today’s sentences were in a previous econlife post.)