Adaptive Path Newsletter for February 10, 2010

Dan [DH]: Your team at YouTube recently rolled out some big changes. What was the focus of the redesign?

Margaret [MGS]: YouTube is about to celebrate its 5th anniversary, so this year seemed like the perfect time to take a step back and think broadly and holistically about the site experience, to make sure that how the site works and looks reflects where we want it to go in the next five years.

So we asked ourselves, “What is a sustainable and expandable design language for YouTube?” It’s a fast-paced organization with lots of passionate people building cool features all the time, and the user interface has had a hard time absorbing all of it gracefully. We knew we’d become a bit cluttered and not as easy to use as we should be and that there was a lot of user-blindness to important functionality on the site as a result. So we embarked on a mission to get back to the basics and make the site experience best of class.

The new opt-in redesign of the video watching page is the first example of the results of that work. Ours goals were to make the experience simpler, smarter, and cleaner. We removed many things from the default view that weren’t critical to watching videos and finding more videos to watch. And the functionality is smarter; performing a search from that page doesn’t interrupt your video watching session, for instance; the video keeps on playing. Also, the context that brought you to the page follows you there; if you clicked on a video from personalized recommendations on the homepage, then you have more of those recommendations to choose from in the top right corner of the video watching page. And aesthetically we wanted a cleaner chrome and that recedes when the video is playing, making the content the star. So the color palette is shifting to be more neutral, and “quieter”. And soon you’ll be seeing changes elsewhere on the site that reflect the same design principles.

DH: Why did you focus there? How did you know that was the right approach? What inputs did you find the most valuable?

MGS: For viewers, the site is first and foremost about watching videos and finding great videos to watch. So our focus is to make those experiences the best they can be. In order to do that, we knew we needed to “unlaunch” some things to focus attention back onto what matters. We analyzed the usage of each UI element and feature, and were pretty rigorous about removing infrequently used elements from the default view. So you see lots of sharing features that used to be exposed all the time collected under a single drop down. It will take a bit of work the first time around for people to acclimate themselves to the shuffling. It’s like when someone rearranges the contents of your kitchen drawers and cabinets; you tend to go back a couple of times to where the utensils used to be before you relearn their new location. But we’ve tested things a lot and feel very confident that these changes will be a big win for our community.

DH: What are some specific techniques you used to drive your decision making?

MGS: We used a participatory design technique called FIDO (Freehand Interactive Design Online); it’s kind of like refrigerator poetry for design. You provide a magnetic board to the study participant, and you ask him or her to design their ideal video watching interface by choosing just the right elements and functionality from a collection of magnets. These magnets included all kinds of features and many versions of that feature. Some were from YouTube; some were inspired by other sites. And some were blank so the participant could add new ones we hadn’t thought of. We let the user compose the picture for his or her ideal experience. While the picture they create is useful, the debrief is likely the most interesting part as they explain their thinking behind the picture they created. And there were some really interesting insights that we gained.

The most important finding was the distinct difference between what someone who watches videos wants versus the needs of someone who uploads and curates videos. Most of the “video watchers” just wanted a player, a list of recommended videos to watch next, and access to search. The interface that video uploaders wanted had many more options. These findings allowed us to discuss what was critical to the page and what was of secondary importance. We combined the data with other studies like heat maps of clicks on the page as well as session analysis to drive some tough discussions about de-emphasizing and un-launching things. This is hard, because every element is the result of some team’s hard work. But we now had data to make the right decisions.

DH: Was there a particular user role you focused on? What are some specific changes you made as a result?

MGS: In the short run we needed to get a strong UX foundation for watching videos. It’s the essential, iconic YouTube experience! So we made lots of changes that were about bringing focus back to the video, and to simplifying how the rest of the page works. The video is front and center and power tools are still there but are placed one click away. We wait for you to exhibit a behavior that indicates you’re likely to be interested in more advanced features. For example, auto-sharing, which shares your actions like favoriting and subscribing directly to other social sites, is a more advanced feature than just one-off sharing. So we expose that option to you once you favorite a video, instead of promotion that option all the time.

Another example is the changes to our ratings system. Looking at the stats, we knew that the vast majority of ratings were 5 out of 5 stars. This means that people mostly just want to say “I like this.” So we have a new binary system that provides and up or down vote, which more clearly matches the needs and behaviors of our community.

As we often do, we shared our data and rationale with the community and asked for their input. Being transparent about our decisions is very important. Our community of video creators and our most engaged viewers are the life blood of our business. It’s only right that they participate in the conversation around change. After all, they are the ones creating all of these great videos! So we showed them what we found and asked, “What do you think that this means?” The community was able to see what we did in the data: an opportunity to make things simpler and smarter for everyone.

DH: What is success for this redesign? What metrics are you watching most closely?

MGS: There are a few things we are watching closely. Obviously the time spent on site and how often they visit are very important metrics. We are looking to extend sessions by exposing people to a more diverse set of videos to watch. And from our UI clean up work, over time, we’ll see an increase of usage of our sharing and community features, as people take a fresh look at the options and discover things of interest to them.

DH: Let’s move to a new topic and talk about YouTube the company. About a year ago you moved from leading UX for Google Search to managing the YouTube design team. What did you find when you joined YouTube? How is it different than the core of Google? What changes did you need to make to the organization?

MGS: Well, the very first thing I noticed is that almost every meeting involves watching videos! If a meeting goes for more than 20 minutes, you’ll have someone say “Did you see this?” and you stop to watch see some amazing content. The team is great and is really passionate about what we do.

In terms of managing change, I’ve led creative teams in many different contexts and have found that it’s important to stop and observe before making dramatic changes to how things work. YouTube is like a big startup even today; we’re doing things really fast. It’s an environment that makes it a bit more difficult to consistently deliver high quality UX. But at the same time it’s critical that we keep pace with engineering, or we become irrelevant.

One of the changes we’ve made over the past year is the role of user experience research. It was hard for the team to run traditional lab studies and share the findings quickly enough to impact the work before it shipped. So we shifted our time towards upfront, strategic research to understand our users and better inform the business, and instead of extended lab studies, we focus on lighter, quicker validation techniques. As a result, research is in a much more influential role. UX designers are working more strategically as well, driving aspects of the product vision, while concurrently keeping pace with the short release cycles. It’s challenging to balance the flows, but the team is doing a great job.

DH: Can you tell me a bit about the structure of the User Experience team at YouTube?

MGS: It’s a group of 14 with UX designers, visual designers, writers and researchers. YouTube is pretty flat, and we tend to have small, cross-functional teams focus on certain areas and aspects of the site. This keeps us fast, but sometimes the product gets developed in silos, rather than holistically. So in UX, we’re moving to organize the projects around similar experiences instead of around our organizational structure. For example, historically the advertising department would focus on ads across the entire site. But we knew that the ways the ads look and behave in relation to the context in which they are placed is very important. So the same designers working on the video watch page and player design are driving the UX for the ads design. The result will be a cleaner, more intuitive, and more effective user experience.

DH: I would imagine that designers are likely working with developers on a regular basis. How are you structured to have that work well?

MGS: Working directly and effectively with engineers is critical to the success of any designer at YouTube or Google. We form small interdisciplinary teams that often sit together and are focused on solving specific problems. Our focus on deep collaboration on product strategy up front bonds the teams; when you have shared goals and a shared vision, you tend to be better partners and better listeners. In UX, we are always gathering feedback and changing the ways that we work with other departments. As a designer, you need to both hold onto the holistic view and be pragmatic about short term challenges. You need to give people permission to raise the red flag when something tactical is in conflict with a larger goal. It takes a lot of experience and observation to know when to compromise and when to hold your ground. Mentorship for younger members of the team is critical to helping them develop this judgment, so we have an active set of mentoring relationships within the team, and also between the YouTube team and the larger Google UX community.

DH: What about working with executives? How does that happen at YouTube? How does experience design leadership find a strong voice in your company?

MGS: It’s very difficult to do great work without support from leadership. At YouTube, we have an executive team that cares deeply about the user experience and wants to do the right thing and to always be improving. I and members of my team meet regularly with our executives and share our work on an ongoing basis; their level of engagement is really remarkable. That focus gives me a lot of confidence to speak authoritatively. It gives me the ability to have high expectations of what the team must deliver. And it also gives us the inspiration to craft a longer term vision for where we are headed. This vision must be formed and shared as a team, since each team member will need to go out and share and apply that vision across every part of our organization and the site experience.

This is a product that I genuinely care a lot about so I can come to the table with a lot of energy and passion. I feel so lucky to help shepherd this amazing thing called YouTube into its next five years and beyond.

DH: This has been a great chat, Margaret. On behalf of our readers and upcoming attendees of MX, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. It’s been very insightful.