YouTube x Berkeley Innovation
YouTube Launch: Kickstarting a YouTuber’s Journey
Discipline
User Research, Product Design, Interaction Design, Product Thinking
Timeline
Sep - Dec 2020
Role
Contracted Project Lead + Design Consultant
For
YouTube Studio Team
Tools
Figma
Summary
The goal given by YouTube was to create a mobile experience on YouTube Studio that helps new, intentional creators worldwide to get started and continue to stay on YouTube.
We created YouTube Launch, a kickstart program that guides and motivates creators through personalized milestones. I was the project mentor and design consultant for the team.
Through Berkeley Innovation, we presented our designs for the Studio team. It is to be implemented starting Q2 2021.
What YouTube told us
The number one profession kids dream of becoming is a YouTuber. However, the actual process of becoming one is hard.
According to YouTube, there is no set way to doing so. Success is different for everyone, and more often than not people fail, with people quitting after five videos.
Which video do I watch??
So, what exactly is the problem?
We knew that the YouTuber journey is arduous. Thus, we did comprehensive research to make sure we fully understood why creators get demotivated in the first place.
Research Summary
We found that new creators have to do the most work in the least motivating phase of the journey.
But why?
Pain Point #1
There is a lack of guidance starting out.
Just from when users create a channel, there is post set-up on-boarding experience, with Creator Academy videos being hidden despite their relevance.
This is in contrast to competitors which provide personalized creator packs for their creators.
Pain Point #2
There is a huge dependence on analytics for direct feedback.
Newer YouTubers felt analytics to be depressing given smaller creators would not have videos with enough views to create relevant data.
However, this is the only form of instant motivation that YouTube provides - thus the tendency to be obsessed with the numbers.
This is so depressing. Thanks YouTube.
Pain Point #3
Newer YouTubers are intrinsically motivated by wanting to express themselves, but YouTube doesn’t support that.
A majority of creators surveyed were most motivated by wanting to express themselves on YouTube, but this is not sustained because as some interviewers because YouTube does not provide any motivational tools.
Based on our 156 survey respondents
Pain Point #4
The video-creation efforts outweigh any satisfaction that YouTubers get during the beginning of their journey.
The dedication to become a YouTuber may be demotivating for some due to the low return of investment : it takes 22 months to get 1000 subscribers.
As budding YouTubers create more videos, our interviewers tell us the have a hard time knowing what to make at expense of the algorithm, conflicting with their own desires.
Thus, most users quit.
Synthesis
Now knowing the sources of demotivation for newer creators, we hypothesized that…
If we guide new creators on using YouTube, we can let creators feel intrinsically motivated, be less dependent on analytics, and be rewarded for smaller accomplishments.
YouTube currently deals with external motivation through analytics and monetization.
Thus we focused our design on encouraging new YouTubers' intrinsic motivation at the beginning of their journey.
Mapping out where we needed to intervene.
Creators feel unmotivated at many different stages of the journey, from starting out, to when they see the lack of engagement, or to when they question if they create worthwhile content. Yet, YouTube does nothing to alleviate this. Thus, we identified key demotivation points to ideate around.
Ideation
A short glimpse of our ideation.
The Milestone Concept.
After ideating, we came up with the concept of milestones and interventions to combine all the types of ideas we had.
Milestones guide the user towards becoming a full-fledged YouTuber, and the interventions to provide the right insights and tips at these critical stages.
Going back to the users.
With the idea solidified, we went through rounds of wire-framing, critiques and user testing with the original interviewees on the concept of milestones. Generally, the feedback was to make things more clickable, illustrative, and hierarchal.
Mid-fidelity
High-fidelity
After user testing!
Our Solution
This is what Youtube Studio looks like now.
This is what we imagine it to be.
Introducing our solution
Launch is creator program centered around a series of personalized milestones for new creators to achieve as they learn the ropes of being a YouTuber. It lives as a separate tab on the Studio interface.
Onboarding, finally.
It begins right when creators first start their channel, where it should be.
To personalize Launch, creators go through a short quiz to inform what content YouTube will suggest to specific creators.
After, YouTubers are guided through the Launch program.
Milestones
Interventions
A more purposeful home page — with no analytics.
On the Dashboard of Studio, there is a centralized Launch card, replacing the analytics card.
In the card, see upcoming milestones to stay on track with progress, and interventions for tips on how to complete the milestone.
Feel rewarded for completing milestones.
When progressing along the journey, different types of cards appear.
They could be to congratulate on achieving small goals, to provide meaningful insight on your channel — relevant for new YouTubers, motivational quotes, and give tips and tricks via Creator Academy videos.
Creators can now see the impact they are bringing to their viewers, and not feel lost trying to navigate on what to make.
Be confident in your progress. You’re gonna be big.
Within the Launch tab, creators can find their full milestones list, see in-depth resources for each milestone, and the long term goals they have set for themselves.
Though they may only be a small YouTuber for now, they can be assured taken the first few steps to becoming big.
Need help? Get inspiration and remind yourself why you’re a YouTuber.
Creators vocalized that deciding on what video to make often stumped them, thus we provided video inspiration, Creator Academy videos to watch, and freedom explore other genres based on onboarding.
Also hearing from other YouTubers can re-ignite their passion for YouTube, intrinsically motivating them to carry on.
But what happens after completing all steps?
Let’s aim even higher.
After completing Launch, creators are congratulated, and rewarded with advanced features and tips to further their channel.
Once they reach this point, creators will be much more motivated to continue their journey.
Insights, answered.
Lack of guidance — Having set milestones
Dependence on analytics — Emphasizing personal growth
Only external motivators — Personalized inspiration
Low return on investment — Celebrating small moments
YouTube Launch: Kickstarting the YouTuber journey.
Wishes
Test with more newer YouTuber users.
Given the time constraints, we only had one round of user testing with our previous interviewees, and it would have been insightful if we tested with YouTubers about to start.
Explore other ways to provide intrinsic motivation.
It would have been useful to read on literature on providing motivation, and see how this knowledge could be used to to design tools of self-reflection.
A big thank you to Bryan for being our client mentor for the Fall semester! And the rest of the team!!
Learnings
Pitch perfect.
A large majority of the project was spent crafting a narrative to present a vision for the YouTube team. This meant creating high-fidelity prototypes, centering on a persona, emphasizing the business value, and practicing pitching to YouTube. However, the pay-off was immense as the project will be implemented sometime this in 2021!
It’s okay to run in circles.
We got lost in the middle on trying to narrow on a few ideas, but every time we did so, we ended up diverging on more ideas. In the end, we decided to focus on what was the most important: the users’ pain points - and tried to tackle each solution for it. It was also my first time being a project mentor, and so I learnt how to pull the team out of these situations.