Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Joost, a new Internet video platform. People seem genuinely excited about it, and the invites are flying left and right. After picking up an invite of my own, I downloaded the application, tried it for a few minutes, and I came to a simple conclusion almost instantly: Joost is pretty lame.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that I have hundreds of channels to watch on my PC. However, the application’s interface sucks. A lot. Seriously, it’s a usability nightmare. I made a decent list of some of the more obvious problems with the interface while exploring the catalog to see the available content:

1. When in full-screen mode, it doesn’t immediately recognize my mouse movements. I have to wiggle my mouse for a couple seconds. Show me the interface already! I mean, come on. This is one of the most basic functions of a video player. Don’t make me wait. I moved my mouse for a reason.

2. I can never seem to find the back button. It’s in the top-left, which should be pretty obvious based on my experience with a web browser, but it’s not obvious enough. Since I can’t find it, I start my search for new shows from the beginning by clicking the “Channel Catalog” button (which is the easiest UI element to understand). I think if the arrow button were in the middle of the left side, and maybe a little bit bigger, I’d have an easier time simply going back one screen.

3. If I leave a video playing while clicking through the menus, it’s not obvious how to get back to the video. After specifically clicking on various buttons just to figure out what they do, I discovered a strange circular button on the top-right of the screen that does the job. You can also click anywhere outside the menu (on the video itself), but that’s not obvious to an inexperienced computer user, or to someone who has never encountered a similar interaction in a video player. Why isn’t there a button on the bottom next to the button labeled “My Channels” or “Channel Guide” that lets me switch between menu modes. If I saw a “Back to Video” button down there, I would instantly know what I needed to do. Plus, with only a single button on the bottom, it feels pretty empty anyway.

4. The buttons to scroll up or down in the list of my favorite channels appear on the right side. I kept finding myself trying to find these buttons on the top and the bottom of the list. If you can’t tell, I’m finding the interface difficult to navigate. In fact, based on the fact that I’ve gotten lost several times makes me wonder if Joost doesn’t follow common interface guidelines. I’m also starting to think that the UI elements simply don’t stick out enough, as if the constrast were way too low.

5. Browsing through the channel catalog is slow and requires too many mouse clicks to get more information that should all be put in one place. For example, I start by clicking on the channel catalog button to view the global channel listing. Next, I pick a category, such as Cartoons and Animation. Now, it shows me a listing of all the channels in the category. Things start going wrong here. I only see the logo for the channel, its title, and a few very small screenshots. I can’t play the channel with one click. There’s no description, so I’m left guessing if I should try to learn more about the channel. Even if I already knew I wanted to save the channel, I can’t add it to my favorites in one click. All of these actions require at least two more mouse clicks. Give me a description on mouse-over, or even right on the list, and some quick buttons to get things done without another page to load (which doesn’t always load quickly either!).

6. The list of my favorite channels shows even less information. There’s an icon that doesn’t seem to tell me anything useful and the channel title. That’s it. There’s no screenshot. The other menu had four of them; why doesn’t this menu have at least one? Thankfully, each item has a few extra buttons like I wanted for the channel catalog. I can click a play button, click an information button to view the channel’s description, or I can choose to view the full channel page. Not bad, but I believe the channel’s description should either appear on a mouse-over, or it should be included in the list by default. I want to scroll through the list quickly much like I do with search results on Google or elsewhere on the web. Navigation should be fast!

Again, I just want to say that Joost has potential, and I love the idea of viewing a lot of video content, like full TV shows, for free, right on my PC. However, I get the impression that this application wasn’t planned, but put together quickly, with many new features added over time without refactoring. I’ve been reading about Joost in sites like Digg for a while now, so I know they’ve had multiple releases, and there was a more restricted beta with fewer invites before, so I’m a pretty disappointed by the lack of polish.

I recommend Democracy Player if you want a clear and easy interface. It’s a little more focused on video RSS feeds (which, by the way, didn’t appear to be an option in Joost), but I definitely found it easier to add and find content with Democracy. What’s interesting is that the options in Democracy aren’t necessarily as rich as Joost, but Democracy’s design is more like a traditional desktop application, and I think that left me with fewer expectations when it comes to the richness of the UI.

For Joost to win me back, I think they definitely need to focus on the user experience–especially in the areas I described above. Once I got my first look at the Joost interface, I think I expected to see a nice mix between Apple’s super-crisp FrontRow interface and Democracy Player. Instead, I discovered a clutter of indecipherable icons, too many mouse clicks to get anything done, and a general sense of “alphaness”. Ultimately, I think I got caught by the hype. The invites make Joost seem exclusive in some way. It worked for GMail, but when I started using GMail, it was already pretty polished.