1. After viewing YouTube on my iPhone and Laptop, I believe YouTube did an excellent job with its iPhone user experience as they condensed the five most important buttons on the footer. The five features are the “Home,” “Shorts,” “Plus (Create),” “Subscriptions,” and “You (Personal Profile).” On the other hand, YouTube’s layout on the Laptop has many more features displayed on the left sidebar, such as “Your Channel,” “History,” “Playlists,” “Your Videos,” “Watch Later,” and “Liked Videos.” The reason why the Laptop layout has more features is that the screen is wider, so it can display more information without cluttering the screen.
2. Take Advantage of Conventions: YouTube puts its most convenient and used features (i.e., “Home,” “Shorts,” “Subscriptions”) in locations where people’s eyes and fingers are closest to the screen. For the iPhone, people hold their phones from the bottom right or bottom left, so putting the clickable buttons on the bottom ensures people can efficiently navigate YouTube. Additionally, people read left-to-right, so the first place they tend to look on a laptop is the left side of the screen, which is also where all of the features are.
Create Clear Visual Hierarchy: YouTube makes its key features larger. For example, YouTube’s thumbnails are larger than its text, and this makes sense since people go to YouTube to watch videos, not read text. Videos can also be categorized by playlists, which reduces screen clutter and makes it easier for people to find similar videos. Additionally, playlists and recommendations are nested logically, as all playlist-related actions are located in the Playlist tab.
Divide Each Page into Clearly Defined Areas: YouTube’s laptop layout has the left sidebar for navigation, the displayed videos’ central content, and the search bar’s header. YouTube’s iPhone layout has a footer for navigation, the central content for the displayed videos, a header for settings, a search bar, and notifications.
Make it Obvious What’s Clickable: YouTube’s laptop layout has multiple obvious clickable buttons, such as “Play All” to watch all of the videos on a YouTuber’s page, the “Subscribed/Subscribe” button, and links in the YouTuber’s biography. On the other hand, YouTube’s iPhone layout involves more steps since it is more condensed. Instead of the “Play All” function that the laptop layout has, the iPhone layout has buttons such as “View All” and “View Channel.”
Eliminate Distractions: YouTube’s homepage is free of distractions, as each page has a clear purpose for what the user should do. The only “distractions” that YouTube has are its advertisements, but they only appear in videos.
Format Text to Support Scanning: YouTube’s titles have bigger and bolder fonts and are also condensed to a few words. This grabs the users’ attention to see what a video may be about and to watch it to understand its message. Also, viewing comments is easy since there’s spacing between other users’ profile pictures, usernames, comments, and replies.
Consider Smaller Screen Sizes: YouTube uses a responsive web design, creating templates that are optimum and unique for its iPhone and Laptop UX/UI. Regardless of the device a user watches YouTube on, it works the same way, with resized and repositioned features.
3. One of Google’s competitive advantages is YouTube, which offers users a high-quality experience when watching and creating content across any device. I realized how impressive YouTube’s condensed features address nearly 100% of my needs in just five icons on the footer, allowing the screen to be organized and clutter-free.
I believe we were asked to analyze the usability of YouTube to give us an idea of why millions of people use YouTube every day. Making a platform that is easily accessible to anyone and highlights their competitive advantage (i.e., videos of all kinds) is the best way to keep people engaged with a site.
Written by Mikael La Ferla
Mikael La Ferla 