Feb - April 2021 (8 Weeks)
Project Manager, UX Researcher and Product Designer
Robert Thompson (UX designer at YouTube)
Steven Schirra (UX researcher at YouTube)
Figma, Zoom
Trello, Qualtrics
We shared our findings and recommendations with the whole YouTube UX team through a virtual presentation on May 2nd.
My team and I scoped, set up, executed, and evaluated an end-to-end research project that uncovered key user needs and mental models that needed to be addressed in the next iteration of the product. Our work provided the YouTube team with specific avenues to explore for new product features based on our research on tablet YouTube content viewers’ needs and motivations.
In this project, I took full ownership of the project manager role and participants recruitment role, also did a fair share of work in doing the UX research. After completing the Research project, I decided to redesign the YouTube App experience, utilizing what we learn from the case study(in progress).
Why do users choose tablets to watch YouTube Videos over laptops or smartphones?
We scheduled inital meeting with our client to discuss overall objectives of the project as well as what prior work has already been done in this space. While we were told even though the prior work was not able to be shared with the team, the key research goals were confirmed with our client as below:
Determine what makes the experience of using tablets (over other methods) unique.
Determine the existing behaviors/patterns/context of use of our Youtube tablet users, and discover design opportunities.
The surveys were used to recruit users for the study. In order to get a broad range of people for the study, we uploaded the (national and international) survey to r/Youtube, r/SampleSize, r/tablet, r/iPad and r/surface. We also sent out the survey to umsi.all.open@umich.edu and personal Facebook groups.
From 2 surveys
Insterested in participanting the future research study
We created an affinity wall to further analyze the qualitative data we got from the Survey Results and discovered following key findings:
People tend to use tablets to watch content in ways that optimize their comfort levels
Tablet users desire a unique, smooth, and well-designed user experience
I sent multiple emails to invite participants who show interest in participating in the future research from the survey to participate in our 45-60 minutes Semi-structure interviews.
We initially targeted YouTube Tablet users from North America only. However, As we were unable to recruit 8 participants from the National survey responses alone, we reached out to several users from Europe who completed the International survey.
We recruited 8 interviewees from our survey respondents for a 60 minute interview. During this time, we will be implementing two research methodologies: a journey mapping and guided interview activity.
The journey mapping activity helps the researchers better conceptualize what people use their tablets for on Youtube. The users were asked to create a map, or sketch of the locations that they use their tablets in for streaming Youtube videos.
Following the journey mapping activity, we asked users to walk us through their final choices once again. Next, we had users select the room in their home that was included in the journey mapping activity and was the last place they watched a Youtube video on their tablet.
We analyzed the data during our debrief sessions. First, we used the otter.ai to transcribe our interview recordings. After correcting the transcriptions, we interpreted the valuable related content and turn them into affinity notes to build our second affinity wall.
Based on the Analysis, I created an empathy map to help the team better empathize with the user's behaviors while using different devices to watch YouTube.
The portability of the tablet provides a non-stop video viewing experience comfortablly compared to laptops and desktops, while still providing a more ideal viewing experience compared to mobile phones.
“ I tend to use an ipad just because it's more portable. So if I do need to get up and move around, I can just bring it with me and not stop playing.”
1. Tablet users often use YouTube to enhance or enable an experience.
“ it is visual. I do not put it in the background. I make sure it's up, facing me. I'm not paying a lot of attention to it, like I said, but it is if we're talking about something relevant that I have to look at and see I'll glance at it”
2. Tablets are used for more intentional actions opposed to mobile phones.
“...I usually use the bigger screen if I like and am committed to watching YouTube, but I use my iPhone when I just don't really have any self control for that time.”
3. Viewing sessions tend to be longer on tablets, compared to mobile devices.
“ I tend to avoid watching long videos on my cellphone because I can just set my tablet up...it's a big enough screen but it's mobile so I can just watch it like wherever i'm doing things in my house”
Users prefer to use the tablet app when paying attention to videos, use the browser when multitasking or listening to something in the background.
“ there are videos on YouTube that are like one-hour Tavern music or one hour, Middle Ages music, I just play one of them on the browser and start studying. And when it stopped I knew I had studied for an hour.”
Users prefer to use browsers to watch YouTube on their tablet than the app because of the ability to use ad-blocker and picture and picture mode without paying the premium fee.
“since on safari, you can use an ad blocker and PIP mode without being a premium subscriber.”
1. Accessories are more essential to the use of tablets than on other devices.
“Not use tablet to listen to music at all because his bluetooth speaker and some earbuds were connected to my phone”
2. Users prefer to open multiple tabs while visiting YouTube.
“More importantly, If I finished with this video, I can quickly refer to that video, and don't have to close the current one”
An Eye-tracking study between tablet and phone/laptop to gain better insights on how long people spend staring at the screen vs. interacting with the website and other tabs.
Multiple participants mentioned they decided to use browsers to watch YouTube videos because the official app does not yet support picture-in-picture mode. If the team wants to drive more traffic to the official app, then enable the PIP feature on iPads may work.
A setting on the tablet app that easily allows users to keep the screen on for video to play when doing other activities (showering, cooking, cleaning, studying, etc)
Change video recommendations based on device the user is on to correlate with time spent on devices.
Shorter content on mobile
15 - 30 minutes video length on tablet / desktop / laptop
Longer on TVs
Create a new homepage section for users with new content not related to algorithm suggestions.
Based on the key recommendations, I created following interactions:
From the user interviews, we discovered that users often use their tablets to enable or enhance their experience. The common contexts users mentioned including:
Watch recipes while cooking.
Watch tutorials when doing Yoga or exercise.
Watch videos while eating.
Listening to music when studying or doing leisure activities.
In the context above, Users may not have the full capacity to use the app, So I decided to propose a feature named "complementary mode" to support users doing these activities.
By activitating the complementary mode, user can:
Skip ads without clicking the skip ads button while both of their hands are occupied by other matters.
non-stop background sounds while using other apps. In this case, users can do tasks they need on other apps with the background sound playing on the YouTube App.
Keep the screen on for video to play when doing other activities.
Users mentioned they tried to get out of the Algorithm loop to watch new content. Multiple interviewees mentioned the reason has been always - "I get similar content all the time". After following up with multiple interviewees, I also discovered:
Users didn't know that removing videos from the watch history could change the algorithm that pushes the content.
Users who knew that making changes on the watch history could influence the algorithm find it is cumbersome to target a specific type of video to modify/remove.
Therefore, I decided to bring awareness of the feature (Show notification at the first time that users remove their watch history) to users and also help them better manage their watch history(Add tags and remove all button).
The existing design on tablet isn't including the capacity to filter and easily remove watched videos. Users have to go over the content and remove them one by one to manage their video recommendations.
Adding the filter feature gives users to remove a specific type of content with ease. With the remove-all button included in the tablet app, Users now could feel better control over the content they want to watch.
After following up with multiple interview participants, I discovered users are lazy to use the incognito mode. Still, they are seeking a video discovery experience that is out of their existing algorithm zone. Thus, I considered bringing the incognito button more visible to users.
Because building relationships and making conversation is more challenging in this scenario, preparing a more instructed script to aid participants going through the interview process is crucial in completing a successful interview. For example, to help our users better understand the journey mapping activity without influence their conceptions, we created a journey mapping example using a completely different scenario. We also mentioned, "This example map is used only for helping you to get a general idea of what we are looking for. You don't have to follow it if you have other perspectives of how this journey map should be."
Finding the time that works the best for your participants. I created a Calendly account and put every team member's maximized availability on it, and let our potential interviewees choose when works the best for them without the hassle of sharing each others' availability through email multiple times. I believe it did help us recruit more users.