youtube launch
Kickstarting the youtuber journey.
summary
YouTube is an online video-sharing platform with a mission to give everyone a voice and show them the world. They challenged Berkeley Innovation, a student-run design consultancy at Berkeley, to design YouTube Studio to be motivating for new and early YouTubers in order to increase user engagement and retention.
YouTube Studio is the home for creators. YouTubers can manage their presence, grow their channel, interact with their audience, and make money all in one place.
As the User Research Lead for this project, I guided the team through designing and distributing a survey, conducting interviews, completing a comprehensive product and market analysis, and synthesizing key insights. I also contributed to persona development, journey mapping, ideation, wireframing, prototyping, and pitching.
role
Product Designer, User Research Lead
team
Conner Manuel, Tiffany Vo, Jago Pang (mentor)
timeline
Sept. 2020- Dec. 2020 (Contract)
results
Designed and developed the concept of YouTube Launch, a program for new creators
Presented final designs and documentation to YouTube designers and execs
Key parts of design were incorporated into YouTube Studio in the spring of 2021
background
People want to become YouTubers, but it is hard. There is increasing competition in the number of creators and the amount of videos on YouTube, so that the path to fame is slim for most aspiring YouTubers. Thus, we asked:
“How might we help creators get started on YouTube, and provide motivation along the way?”
core experiences
YouTube Launch is a program within YouTube Studio to guide new content creators through the first steps of their Youtube Journeys. Here’s a look at the final flows of YouTube Launch’s core experiences through the lens of a fashion YouTuber. For a more in-depth discussion of my creative process, scroll down to the next section!
1. onboarding
To support the personalization of Launch, users first go through a short but comprehensive onboarding quiz asking about their favorite YouTubers, the genre of videos they might be interested in making, their long-term goals for the channel, and other information that allows YouTube to create a personal YouTuber profile for them to inform what content YouTube will suggest to specific creators during the Launch program.
Here, users get acquainted with the key features of the Launch program: milestones and the resources to complete them.
2. dashboard
The Launch card is a central hub that summarizes everything at a glance: upcoming milestones and intervention cards below. Each milestone has a corresponding icon and intervention that details resources to help users complete milestones.
To take the emphasis away from analytics, the dashboard does not display any numbers and instead focuses on celebrating small moments and personal growth.
3. milestones
The individual milestone page tracks a user’s progress and shows completed, current, and upcoming milestones in a carousel. Creators can also view a full Milestone History of their accomplishments.
Users can click on each milestone card to show more details and all the relevant resources compiled by YouTube for that specific milestone.
4. inspiration
The Inspiration tab features personalized content curated by YouTube based on a user’s interests and channel genre. Resources include Creator Academy videos, videos by similar creators, and success stories from their favorite YouTubers.,
The Inspiration Board holds all the videos YouTube suggests for a creator. It is categorized to offer users guided help in content creation, technical skills, and channel growth, as well as the creative freedom to explore other genres.
5. completion
After completing all the milestones, YouTube congratulates users, who are now well-equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to be a committed YouTuber.
Users then get to unlock several features as a reward for completing the program and as an incentive to continue on their YouTube journey.
After Launch is over, the page and card disappear, but the personalization of content continues with relevant feedback based on a creator’s progress.
the process
research
My team of Berkeley Innovation consultants and I worked with the YouTube Studio Team on this project. YouTube provided us general insights based on their past research, but to understand this problem space in more depth, we established key learning areas that our research tackled:
1. User trends surrounding content creation and creator motivation
2. Current video sharing/streaming platforms on the market and how they compare to YouTube
3. YouTube’s ecosystem including the ~algorithm~, monetization, channel growth, average lifetime of a YouTuber, and disproportionate traffic levels
A. Key Insights
We found out that new creators have to do the most work in the least motivating phase of their journey.
1. There is a lack of guidance starting out.
When users create a channel, there is no onboarding experience. In addition, YouTube’s resources like Creator Academy videos being hidden despite their relevance. This is in contrast to competitors that provide personalized creator packs for their creators.
2. There is a huge dependency on analytics for direct feedback.
Newer YouTubers feel that analytics are depressing, given that smaller creators would not have videos with enough views to create positive (or even relevant) data. However, it is the only form of instant feedback that YouTube provides - thus there is a tendency to be obsessed with the numbers.
3. Newer YouTubers are intrinsically motivated by wanting to express themselves.
The majority of creators surveyed were most motivated by wanting to express themselves on YouTube. Yet, this feeling is not sustained, because YouTube does not provide any motivational tools.
4. The video-creation efforts outweigh any satisfaction that YouTubers get during the beginning of their journey.
The dedication to become a YouTuber is demotivating for some due to the low return on investment; It takes 22 months to get 1000 subscribers. As budding YouTubers create more videos, our interviewers tell us they have a hard time knowing what to make at expense of the algorithm, often conflicting with their own desires. Thus, most users quit after five videos.
2. synthesis
design direction: Let’s focus on intrinsic motivation.
In what ways can we provide guidance and motivation for new YouTubers? We decided to focus on intrinsic motivation because YouTube currently already provides a lot of external motivation in the form of subscriber/view counts and monetization. This will allow us to capitalize on creators’ motivations of self-expression.
A. Polarity Mapping
Based on the subjects who participated in our research, we categorized our interviewees on spectrums of motivation and commitment to being a Youtuber. We decided to focus on the Casual x Self-Expressive user because they would be the least motivated in the early stages of the YouTuber Journey.
B. Persona
Within this quadrant of our polarity map, we extracted key characteristics of our user, Angel.
C. Journey Mapping
With this persona of Angel in mind, we were able to draft a detailed journey map, showing specific moments of opportunity for intervention (displayed in blue). Creators’ feelings correspond to motivation levels, and our goal was to solve the low points of motivation and maintain high ones. We decided to focus on “Planning” and “First Steps” as they would be the most pertinent to the beginning of the YouTuber journey.
3. ideation
A. Crazy 8’s
Our research insights informed the team to ideate under two focus areas: Discovery and Goals. Discovery allows creators to build their own personal YouTube identity and be inspired by others. Goals encourages creators' motivations and dreams surrounding YouTube.
B. Low-Fi
From this first round of ideation, our team came up with 4 initial ideas. Onboarding is a creator quiz that allows YouTube to create a YouTuber profile for each user, Memories is a history of accomplishments about the user’s channel, Inspiration is a tool to help users when they are stuck creatively, and Task Management is a to-do list that Youtube and the user generates. I sketched out the first iteration of Memories and Task Management, which later evolved to become Milestones.
In discussing these four initial ideas, and reviewing research pain points, our team asked ourselves,
“Do these ideas solve the user’s pain points?”
research insight: “New creators experience a lot of demotivation during the first few videos in their YouTube journeys due to lack of guidance and dependence on analytics for feedback.”
After reviewing our research, we recognized that “Onboarding” was only a precursor to the actual solution. We reached a consensus to focus on “Memories”, “Inspiration”, and “Task Management”, as they would be the most directly impactful to a creator’s early growth.
B. Mid-Fi
With this decision in mind, our team was able to move forward with mid-fidelity prototyping.
the birth of “Milestones”
At this point, our initial ideas of Task Management and Milestones merged to become Milestones. This was because we realized that the word “Tasks” has a negative connotation eluding to work or responsibilities, so we decided to change the name to be “Milestones”, which provides a sense of accomplishment and positivity.
On the other hand, we recognized that Memories was not viable as a standalone idea because new YouTubers would need lot of time to create memories. Thus, the essence of Memories became the Milestone History feature.
4. Iteration
Milestones are used to target points of demotivation or confusion and help creators progress in their journey, through various features of Inspiration that provide guided help. From here came YouTube Launch, a way to guide new creators through the first steps of their YouTube Journeys.
A. Information Architecture
We had all the pieces, but we needed to link things together and integrate them into the current YouTube information architecture. We decided that Launch lives on a separate page in the hamburger menu because it is a temporary intervention meant for the beginning of a YouTuber’s journey. The singular card on Dashboard summarizes everything in the Launch page, similar to how YouTube Studio works right now. Milestones and Inspiration are designed as tabs under the Launch page, with more resources as users click deeper.
B. User Testing
We conducted 4 user testing sessions to understand how users would interact with our product and understand whether our milestone journey makes sense, as well as the level of guidance users preferred in this product.
We presented our first version of a high-fidelity prototype to new and aspiring YouTubers, asking users to go through the process of uploading their first video, and their impressions of completing this milestone. We also did some A/B testing on key screens to identify which ones communicated ideas more clearly.
we implemented 4 main changes based on user testing interviews.
a quick recap
Pain Points
Lack of guidance
Dependency on analytics
Self-expression as motivation
Low return on investment
solutions
Having set milestones
Emphasis on personal growth
Personalized inspiration and guidance
Celebrating small moments
final thoughts
Some team love via Zoom <3
YouTube Launch was a very comprehensive UI/UX project, and I enjoyed every second of it. From research to testing and everything in between, I learned so much about designing for an existing product and fitting new ideas into existing design systems. Most importantly, I learned to keep the user central to the design process and transform pain points into product ideas. Overall, this was an incredibly rewarding project, and I’m so grateful for my team.
A HUGE thank you to Bryan, Constantine, and Shuang from the YouTube team for their continuous support and mentorship throughout this project. It was a pleasure learning and working with you guys! :)