My team and I began by looking at Youtube mobile platform as a whole.

We took time to think about what makes Youtube stand out against competitors, and what features give competitors an edge.

We researched our audience, and thought about what different users might choose Youtube for.

Based on the Youtube features we researched, my team and I created a non-biased survey to collect data from users.

The best way to figure out what user’s enjoy, or where their pain points are is…to ask them!

We sent our survey out online and got over 75 responses. Next, we cleaned our data.

Each of our group members conducted a one on one interview with a regular Youtube user.

We handed out consent forms, and took notes to share our findings.

We reconvened and took note of some interesting findings, but kept our perspectives open so our biases didn’t get in the way.

Next, we created 3 user personas to represent different users that might use Youtube in entirely different ways.

These personas helped us get into the mind of the user while generating concepts, and made sure our ideas would support each one.

Next, we took our findings and mapped out how we could improve the most common pain points for users.

My specific role on this project became honing in on the profile page that includes a users profile settings, as well as playlists and the watch later feature.

Through our research, something that came up multiple times was users enjoying the watch later and playlists feature, but then forgetting to ever come back to it. I wanted to find a way to solve this problem, and make the profile page feel less like a lost space… This page on Youtube felt like the things you find under the couch cushions that are important, but that you forgot you were missing.

Overall, the profile section being combined with the watch later/playlists feature was hiding one of the most popular features on Youtube within an unassuming page, leaving users to forget about it.

To solve this, I split the profile page, and the playlists/watch later page into their own separate places. Instead of having the profile page on the nav bar, I added it among other setting header buttons already in the application, which allows the user to immediately associate that this is a similar setting type button.

To include solutions for every type of user that might be sharing profiles with a family or partner, I included a one tap profile switch to keep algorithms organized for each user.

I reorganized the new playlists page to imitate the current style, since users didn’t have issues navigating the page, they just forgot it was there.

To solve the forgetfulness for a popular feature, I added playlists to the navigation bar where the profile/playlists conglomerate used to live.

I conducted a usability test. I watched the user go through the new flow, and find her way through the new profile section, and new playlists section.

The user’s feedback was that this flow made a lot more sense to her. She enjoyed the organization, and it felt less overwhelming and forced together like the original watch later felt to her (and to the majority of users we surveyed and interviewed)

A pain point in the new flow was that the switching profile feature I included in the profile setting page was not intuitive, and she was confused how to change a profile.

Overall, when backed by research, even tweaks to an application that feel tiny can be life changing in a user’s day to day experience.

My takeaways from testing would be to update the profile changing feature to be more intuitive that the option is there to switch a profile in one tap. Maybe something that could make this better is a drop down…We’ll find out during the next usability test how we can keep listening to users to give them a better experience!