YOUTUBE SHORTS
UNLOCKING CREATOR POTENTIAL
I had amazing convserations with content creators and got to call it “research.” Our team then presented the findings to the UX Research team at YouTube.
YouTube came knocking.
YouTube's design team approached my team to conduct usability testing for YouTube Shorts, their short-form video feature. The primary goal was to gain insights into the user experience of young creators.
The project culminated in a final research readout to YouTube's UX Research Manager, Silvia Vergani. Our findings and insights laid the groundwork for the Shorts team moving forward.
We focused on 3 main groups to conduct initial research.
Ad-hoc interviews with our personal networks (As the project lead, I encouraged my team to, as we liked to call it, “vibe in” by having conversations with their communities.)
Small-scale influencers and creators (~1k to 10k followers)
Creators with large followings (~100k to 1m followers)
Fun Fact: One of the creators we interviewed was Adam Barrera. As an active TikTok creator, Adam’s expertise gave us a lot of great insight!
We learned about the creative process for short-form video creators.
Our journey map documented the creator process based on interviews we had with creators in our initial phase of research. It helped the team put into context what we were about to do usability testing for.
Not your average usability testing! Enter…laptop hugging!
In order to record the sessions and get a look at the users’ interactions up close, we utilized laptop hugging! Laptop hugging is a technique used by a handful of major companies, such as Facebook, MailChimp, and Google.
Our moderators had participants turn their laptop cameras toward their phone, so other team members could watch their interactions in real-time.
For more information on laptop hugging, check out this article.
Rapid Synthesis
The team had been parallelly synthesizing and debriefing after each phase of the project. Once the sessions came to a close, we held a rapid synthesis session to analyze what we had learned from the users. Plotting pain points, categorizing themes and topics, and going over each usability session helped us deconstruct the current short-form user experience.
Presenting to YouTube
The project culminated in a final research readout to YouTube’s UX Research team, led by Silvia Vergani. The work we conducted was documented and set the foundation for the next team to continue usability testing.
