Web/Mobile App Critique

 

For this post, I decided to look over the famous YouTube. I personally have been using this application for years and used this for listening to new and old music (before I began using Spotify). I remember using this and seeing people upload their own videos before there was the “influencer” stage. According to McFadden, “YouTube was originally created as a platform for anyone to post any video content they desired. It was hoped that users could use the site to upload, share, and view content without restriction. It has since grown to become one of the foremost video distribution sites in the world. Today, many content creators make a decent living by selling ad space before or on videos they create and upload onto the site” (2020).

With how the app is designed now, it provides an abundance of different viewing items. On their main page, there is some watch history for the user and even current news from around the world. Additionally, there are tabs on your popular search “tags” and some short clips designed for quick viewing. To make the app more direct, there is a search area as well to find the clip you are looking for.

With the app growing and being such a popular location for people around the world to visit, there are a few different versions of this app. But what do I mean? There is now a YouTube premium, YouTube studio, YouTube Music, YouTube Kids, and YouTube TV (yes, YouTube TV is another way to replace having cable in your house). Each one of these versions offers different amenities and are user-friendly in the end. There is a nice little walk through once you click into these different versions to give you a quick glance into the versions. Overall, the usability / functionality is easy but with more use, it becomes second nature to use it.  

 

The design for this application is impressive as well. I personally have my appearance set to copy over what my devices appearance is (dark mode for everything). But the way the different videos layout on the main screen to when watching the videos is a plus. When watching the video, you are able to change up the size of the video, look over recommended videos on the side, and even start commenting to the creators / others. Additionally, there is a tab bar design. I feel this is designed to be user friendly. It provides your history, liked videos, your own videos, subscriptions (so you can find your favorite creators), explore new items, and more.

But everything cannot be perfect. On the main page, you can just scroll forever when using the website. I started scrolling to see how the bottom of the page and it kept adding more videos to view. I would recommend having a stopping point for this so it doesn’t seem too much. Second I would recommend having a bit more control over what tags pop up and explore section. It seems like it is trying to get you to look into more items while using the app. Adding too much. I would recommend applying a drop arrow for each section to condense the site. And if I had to nitpick, maybe add a feature in for watching videos and having the video be a mini-player which pops to the front. So, when you are working on something in a different window on your PC, you can still have this mini YouTube player pop up in. Could be useful for tutorials.

 

References:

McFadden, C. (2020) Interesting Engineering. YouTube's History and Its Impact on the Internet. https://interestingengineering.com/culture/youtubes-history-and-its-impact-on-the-internetLinks to an external site.

YouTube (2023). https://www.youtube.com/Links to an external site.