The Online User Experience

YOU TUBE.COM

Global Assessment

How do you assess the online user experience of this product / website?

Perform USER RESEARCH!

Diversified results"I just want to watch videos" users They want as simple of an interface as possible

"I want to connect with people" usersMore engaged - often uploaders. They care about details like how to make communication with their audience easier and more effective, how to grow their audience, and even how to make money on YouTube.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone fits nicely into one of the two aforementioned categories

It's not always easy to know what the best balance is for everyone.

How do we design a site that reflects so many different users, experiences and videos? 

User Research can help!

Global Assessment

How do you assess the online user experience of this product / website?• FIDO (an early example of UX research, where different

elements of various video sites were cut out, stuck on magnets, and users were asked to arrange their ideal organization of the elements, as per the example on the previous slide).

• Usability lab / tests (to confirm whether a user can or can't complete certain standard site tasks).

• Field studies (qualitative research to understand how users use YouTube in their context having the latter being interviewed in their homes).

• Traffic analysis (YouTube looks closely at the behavior of millions of users through traffic analysis and tries to understand what users think of the site by deploying thousands of surveys).

 Source http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/10/inside-user-research-at-youtube.html#uds-search-results

Global Assessment cont.• TestTube experiments (http://www.youtube.com/testtube)• One-on-one conversations with the community and even on

forums like the Product Ideas for YouTube page.• No of conversions (no of relevant content found, no of video

views)• No of bounces• Level of Interaction / Engagement

o Shares of contento Ratings/comments of content and features

• YouTube blog (extensively used by users to post feedback and comments)

• Mentions/buzz• Feedback button on the YouTube's main page (encouraging

users to send feedback on the new videos, playlists, and channels' experience)

A really big challenge

"When you work in user-generated content, you are co-designing with a couple of million people" 

Margaret Gould Stewart Head of user experience at YouTube

Users express their opinion• thejoltjoker said...• i think you should as with the homepage. that you can add or remove boxes and move around them

and stuff. that would be awesome :)• October 5, 2009 1:38 PM• ThunderDonkey said...• I filled in the form, YT is great :)• October 5, 2009 1:54 PM• andymooseman said...• Being somebody who is in the second group you mentioned, i want to be able to communicate with

the people who watch my videos. At the moment though, the comment system is well & truly messed up! I don't know what you've done. But, over the past few days, it just doesn't work properly.If you want us to communicate, please give us back the main tool that enables us to do this.Please fix the comment system, thanks.

• October 5, 2009 2:29 PM• paul said...• Yes, PLEASE fix the comments! If you are watching a very popular video that has a lot of comment

churn, the comments keep repeating. It's strange that the same company that is developing Wave, the most advanced way to have live comments, also produces one of the worst comment experiences of any site on the web. How can this be?

• October 5, 2009 2:59 PM• theguy0000 said...• honestly, my favorite youtube was when there were no movable boxes. it was that "now being

watched" auto-scrolling thing, then subscriptions, then the rest of the homepage was used for featured videos, in a list, not the box and thumbnails there is now. that's just my ideal layout. all these dynamic boxes, it almost seems overly customizable. i guess its cool, but it seems kind of cluttered and annoying. I liked the classic youtube. (not back when videos took 4 days to upload and comments took a day to post, but shortly after that.)

• October 5, 2009 3:00 PM

YouTube listensSome of the recent changes:- Streamlined look and functionality -- the video is the star 

- New "next up" video list: YT gets smarter about queuing up other videos for the user to watch taking into  consideration how the latter found a video. 

- Description and stats areas united

- Cleaned up actions bar 

- Simplified binary ratings: YT moved towards a simpler "Like / Don't Like" model. 

- New player sizing and video quality controls

- Search results within the page

- More prominent channel/subscriber placement

Source Youtube blog

YouTube user experience in 2011

Online video has moved from a largely passive medium to a far more interactive one!

With nearly 8 years of video uploaded and 3 billion views logged every day on YouTube, it’s clear that users like to watch and share

YouTube videos.

Youtube has made online video watching pretty easy; A player, a play/pause button and some content. Done. Lower than TV video quality doesn’t seem to interest users as much, solutions for mobile video watching have already been developed and sharing thoughts by some users on a video has not added much complexity either.

Their team is constantly experimenting, tweaking and playing with new ways to make users’ experience exactly what they are looking for. YouTube has gone a long way to satisfy its users, but there is always room for improvement.

Best Practices Describe 5 functionalities or features about

this product / website that you like particularly

    1. Easy to use (helps users find what they are looking for thereby fostering adoption)• Onsite search engine• Mis-spelling, auto-completing, search by category, related items• Videos play without using media players and upload fast• No time limit• Simple and clean layout

2. Social functionalities (build engagement)• Consumer co-creation (user-generated content)• Digital self expression• Sharing - Video embedding (fosters the viral diffusion of content )• Commenting• Rating, etc

Best Practices cont.     3. Personalization (fosters adoption)

• Different home page configuration for different kind of users• Preferred video size customization• Recommendation system (helps users discover new things based on their

preferences. Serendipity - featured categories such as most viewed, what’s new, trends, spotlight - also enables users discover videos they wouldn’t otherwise watch) 

• Playlists, Favorites, YouTube Leanback (offering an uninterrupted stream of full-screen YouTube videos in high definition based on the user's YouTube preferences and movie rentals), etc

• Personal channels (largely customizable, an advanced functionality for heavier users)• YouTube video editor

     4. Licensed content (launch of Creative Commons licensing on YouTube. A CC option has been added on YouTube’s video editor where a user can easily get a creative commons license) http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/06/youtube-and-creative-commons-raising.html

          5. Application for a mobile device

 

Worst PracticesIdentify 3 pain points in your experience using this

website and how it could be improved

1. Content filtering (YouTube faces some significant control issues)

2. Lack of comprehensive community rating system YouTube would be well advised to emulate the movie industry's approach to self-governance-a simple,

community-based rating system similar to the MPAA ratings would greatly enhance the user experience. The ability to restrict access based on more detailed content classifications would alleviate many parents' concerns regarding their children's online media viewing. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a concerted effort to provide detailed, age-appropriate ratings. Perhaps YouTube and its competitors need the same impetus that caused the movie industry to provide this service-the threat of censorship and government intervention. For that to happen more public outrage is needed. And, for that, all we need is for concerned parents to spend a little bit more time surfing YouTube with their children.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2544031/youtube_the_prevelance_of_porn_and.html?cat=25

3. No video preview availability

NewFeatures

Suggest 1 new feature or functionality that would be helpful to you. Follow a 3-step process for that: research, design and test. Use people of other teams as your target group.

Ability to tag comments on the video timelineThere are so many comments such as "check this or that 1:38", this is a proven successful feature for music already.

Alternatively we would suggest:• Flexibility to choose Preview image  Ability to select any freeze frame from a

video to place as the video icon.• More Preview options  Short fluid video preview of videos when hovering over

them.

Online User Experience drives customer retention rather than new customer

acquisition!

THANK YOU