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In recent years, YouTube has seen an increase in competition from platforms like TikTok which have risen in popularity among teenagers for its strong discovery features and simple interaction patterns. YouTube is already wildly popular across the age spectrum, so the challenge in designing a new feature came down to two factors:
YouTube is an incredibly popular application, and it wouldn’t have maintained its popularity without being easy to use. Adding a new feature would need to stay true to the already strong UX of the app. To maintain consistency, I started with a focus on crafting two main personas. Instead of focusing on user demographics as archetypes, my personas represent two main user groups: the passive viewer and the curator (someone who likes to fine tune results and make playlists). I created personas to focus the scope of my work and to create a living rubric by which to evaluate the effectiveness of my designs by.
My personas helped focus my work, but now I needed to turn my attention to how my new feature (YouTube Feeds) would work. I began to brainstorm possible paths my users might take to reach their goals. These brainstorms would first form a list of ideas and later be visualized as flow diagrams. Starting with user flows before creating wireframes helped to ensure that whatever I ended up designing would meet my users' goals.
By this point I had a pretty good idea of how the Feeds feature was supposed to work, so it was time to give it some visual substance. Starting with sketches, I created a set of medium-fidelity wireframes for the main pages in the flow. Because YouTube is an established product with a robust UI, I knew I didn't need to spend time designing something new from scratch. Giving my feature a facelift later would be relatively easy, but before I could dive into that work I needed to validate my design decisions with real users, specifically testing:
I created a provisional prototype using Framer to animate the wireframes for testing the feature flow. While my prototype was sufficient for a discussion-based test, I plan on learning to develop more full-featured prototypes. Usability testing was key to understanding whether my decisions were meeting my goals. The feedback I received in my testing sessions helped guide the changes I made in refining the UX.
To stay consistent with YouTube language I needed to change the "follow" link to "subscribe." Additionally consider moving the button near to the video creator's avatar to link them visually.
To improve the experience, I'd need to show users how to interact with the interface since it varied from the normal YouTube style.
The interest input screen needs to be reworked to allow for easier input of user interests (How do you load more options? Can I search? etc.)
I spent a significant amount of time iterating on the feed setup screen, ideating on various ways of increasing customizability while maintaining the utility of YouTube's suggestion engine. Given more time on the project I would have liked to do a second round of user testing to get a sense of which version is most successful. I also spent time addressing the need for greater clarity when it comes to the interaction patterns for Feeds. The most straightforward solution involves a quick popup with instructions. Furthermore, to aid in feed curation I added a mechanism for users to dislike videos to fine tune the algorithm results to their liking.
Creating a novel feature within an existing application was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about designing for consistency and maintaining an existing style. The biggest challenge I faced in this project was communicating my vision for the product when my prototyping skills weren’t sufficient. Using mid-fidelity wireframes and an interview-style user test really helped me get the best feedback. I’m challenged now to up my game in prototype development. With more time I would: