Hack Day Showcases Fun Ways to Use Netflix

You are sitting at your desk, working hard when your phone beeps. It’s a text from your boss, and it reads three words: “Netflix and hack?”

That’s probably not how the invitations were sent out to the Netflix’s seventh Hack Day, but one can dream. The event is designed to offer Netflix employees a bit of a break from their usual workload and allow them to experiment with new technology and collaborate with colleagues on fresh ideas. These new hacks are meant to increase efficiency, improve the Netflix product, or simply make the office or the service more fun.

This is the seventh Hack Day hosted by Netflix, and the second so far this year. The first one was hosted in August 2014. Hack Day lasts a full 24 hours, and projects must be started and finished in that tight timeline.

The hacks are not really meant to become a permanent part of the Netflix product, but more so to showcase the creativity and skills of the employees involved. Netflix took some time to collect their favorite projects from the most recent hack day and showcase them in a blogpost. Look no further though, as the best ones are featured below.

Netflix Vending Machine

Maybe you don’t have a credit card, or live in an area where paying with plastic may not be realistic. Enter the Netflix vending machine, designed to let any user pay their bill with cold hard cash.

Teleflix

Have you ever wanted to use an authentic 1920s telegraph key and morse code to watch Netflix from the comfort of you chair? Us neither, but this hack shows an ingenious use of century old technology in a modern setting.

Spookyflix

Sometimes watching scary movies isn’t enough. A scary selection menu with faces and bodies that follow your cursor is the next step in the evolution of the creepy horror genre.

Continue Binge Watching

This one hits a little too close to home, as the hack clearly lets you know how far you have binged into a series and the last time you watched an episode.

As you can see, the hacks are quite fun and meant to play around with the widely-recognized Netflix platform. Some of the ideas are out there in terms of usability, but some seem like they could be added as features, particularly the “Continue Binge Watching” aspect. If anything, it just serves as a reminder that you should maybe get up and stretch your legs during that 11 hour Narcos binge.