Despite being the leader in video hosting, YouTube Live as a live streaming platform is notoriously known for its issues when it comes to displaying and presenting live streams in an effective way.
This redesign of the site structure and presentation of live streams on YouTube takes user research and implements it into the YouTube ecosystem in a manner which seamlessly brings YouTube Live more in line with the expected mental models that users have when browsing for live streams.
This project started with a personal assumption about YouTube's current layout and from there competitive analyses were carried out regarding the other leaders in live streaming.
In gaming, Twitch.tv is the standard in the western world. For mobile I looked at how TikTok and Instagram presented their live streams on their platforms.
This information was brought into the research plan where interview participants would share their insights into their live stream viewing habits, and how they (would try to) interact with YouTube's live page.
The users shared similar thoughts as to what they look for when browsing live streams, and the shortcomings of YouTube in its current state.
YouTube currently displays the link to its live page halfway down the sidebar on the home screen.
The problems of the users were similar across the board, but when it came to how the users used live streams, there were clear indicators that there were different needs for the different user groups. Due to this, user personas were developed with these needs in mind, to address the different groups.
YouTube's current architecture is not sustainable and will buckle as the platform continues to grow in the world of live streaming.
A new sitemap was constructed to bring YouTube Live further into the spotlight alongside videos and shorts at the top of the sidebar.
In addition to this, the YouTube Live page is now subdivided in more user friendly categories, as well as displaying the categories more prominently, and providing a more robust categorization system than the few options that YouTube currently provides for its live streams.
User flows were developed for the typical use cases found from the research. The way that people typically would view / browse for streams fell under one of these flows which would later be the basis for the wireframes and prototypes that would be tested.
The development of the design carried on from analysis of the user flows. Wireframes were created to integrate the new pages and features of the updated site structure into the YouTube brand ecosystem.
The first of the main pages designed was the Live home page, the first level of categorization from YouTube's overarching collection of content. Live was brought up the sidebar alongside shorts and subscriptions, but the page it takes you to has been overhauled to address the user feedback and present the information in a way that users both wanted and expected.
YouTube's featured streams take the first slot of space in the main window, followed by the user's subscribed channels which are currently live. As you scroll down below the fold, streams are presented to the user by the highest viewed streams, the algorithm recommended streams, and then upcoming streams that the user might be interested in.
The second main page to be developed for this project is the category display page. User research showed that users typically want to browse by category before being shown individual streams when it comes to browsing for something to watch. The first set of categories is displayed based on the algorithm and the user's subscriptions, and the rest of the categories are then displayed in order of currently live viewers.
YouTube's current categorization is nonexistent beyond three categories of news, gaming, and sports. This update fleshes this out by providing categories for individual games and other categories previously uncategorized like ChitChat, Music, and Travel. In addition to this, the existing tag system which is sparingly used in YouTube is utilized here to further refine the user's browsing.
Another large concern that YouTube Live has versus its competitors is that YouTube as a platform is more international and language options need to be more visible when it comes to browsing content on this platform. These filter options are also provided on this browsing page.
The last main page developed is the individual category page. This page displays the category, a brief description, related tags, and a subscribe button.
The live streams on the page are then displayed in different groups for this selected category: Your Subscribed Live Streams, Top Live Streams, Recommended Live Streams, and Upcoming Live Streams.
Testing for this was done with two tasks in mind, the main problems people had with the current state of YouTube Live in the initial round of user research were finding the live page itself, and then browsing within it for desired content. With this information, the usability test participants were asked to:
Done in two phases with two different groups of users, the initial wave of usability testing went out via Maze and user data showed that the first task had 100% direct success rate, but a problem with the second task was that users felt bombarded with information by the tags being displayed on the Live page leading to only a 70% success rate.
The problems were addressed on the prototype, and a second wave of testing was conducted. With this one showing drastic improvements in the second task, bringing it to 100% success rate, and lowering the average completion time for most users in the second group of testers.
This project had me in a back and forth dialog with the users when it came to the initial research, getting feedback on the structure and categorization, and the usability testing of the high fidelity prototypes.
Users were very clear about what they wanted to see and what was confusing for them in both the current state of YouTube, as well as the iterations leading up to the final prototype.
The design in the end was successful, and I am interested to see how YouTube moves forward as it continues to grow as a live streaming platform.
