• UX & UI Design

Difficulties with YouTube UX

Since the time when google introduced new YouTube interface any major innovations were introduced. Here is a promo video of an interface, check it out!

Luckily for everyone (or unfortunately) Google is ferociously pushing its socials throughout all services, YouTube is no exception. Now you can connect your YouTube to Google+ and Facebook. And here is where difficulties appear.

The worst thing is that you can’t abolish those items, even if you choose not to connect to a Facebook account. The algorithm of display of shared via Google+ videos is pretty vague, you may see vids from strangers that’s due to Extended circles function, of even from people whom you’ve uncircled. The home page is a total channel-based mess. Google thinks you just want to watch stuff you’re subscribed to. Beneath those social media links are 5 of the channels you’re subscribed to.

In the center column there is a chronological listing of activity in all your channels. Clicking on the channel you’ll see activity from there. Guess what, there’s no way to change sort order, which is a failing if you’re trying to watch some kind of series of videos. You have to scroll to the bottom of the feed and work your way up.

YouTube recommends both channels and videos, based on…who knows what? There’s no way to disagree with a channel recommendation, meaning there is no possible way to improve them. For individual videos, you have to click through to the video and then give it thumbs down to get it out of your recommendations list. I’m not a YouTube power-user: I rarely “hang out” there, generally am driven there by a link or an embedded video with cats or something interesting, besides the things mentioned above the most frustrating are the ads, feels like you can’t hide from them.

If you experience any other difficulties with YouTube feel free to complain in the comments section.