A Critique of a Favorite Website: YouTube

Websites today provide services to users. Due to the customizability of websites, services provided vary greatly. The website under review today is a video sharing platform, YouTube. YouTube is by far the most popular video sharing platform found online. Overall, YouTube does what it sets out to do very well, that being video sharing, promotion, and monetization. 

The site has all the regular features you would expect from a video sharing platform: personalized video recommendations, tabs for popular video types (ie: Sports, Podcasts, Gaming), and areas to upload and manage your content. Good design is invisible; in YouTube’s case it is crystal clear. There are no standout features or gimmicks, but the site has 20 years of refinement, and it shows.

  


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YouTube Home Page


Design – What you would expect from a modern website. 

There is nothing impressive about the graphics, but that is likely the point. As with most modern websites there are very few colors in the UI. The focus of the site is the videos found within it, so the spare use of color makes the thumbnails of videos pop out. In addition, the menus and selections are pushed to the sides of the screen. You even have the option to remove the sidebar completely, thus giving as much space for videos as possible. 


Functionality/Navigation – Fantastic, simple, and easy to use. 

YouTube’s success can be attributed to its simplicity. Using YouTube is straightforward. Most people just click on videos on the homepage or find something specific through the search bar. Everything you need to interact with the entire site is available right on the homepage. 

In my case, I have history and recommendations turned off. This meaning the homepage I open is completely blank. This does not detract from the experience though, as I usually navigate to the “Subscriptions” page on the left sidebar. Clicking this brings up every video of every creator I am subscribed to ordered by news to oldest. One of my few complaints is the inability to set the “Subscriptions” menu as the default page.  

The simplicity continues once you click on a video. In total, 13 buttons are immediately available for video (highlighted in yellow). The buttons have icons that attempt to visually show what they do. Some are universal icons like a “CC” box for closed captioning and a Gear for settings, but some of the others are not as straight forward. Most of this can be fixed with the Context Menus from hovering over the icons or outright clicking the button and seeing what happens. 

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A Video and Its Features

A feature I wish was more apparent are the built-in keyboard shortcuts. They are simple button combinations that make the site even more effortless to use. Despite their usefulness, they are never explicitly mentioned anywhere. I had no clue these shortcuts existed for my first 8 years with the site. This time would have been longer had I not accidentally paused a video with the space bar and started experimenting. 


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Usability – Effortless and engaging. Picks up on user’s interests well. 

Complimentary to YouTube’s simple, easy to understand functions; the usability of the site is very good. The search engine and video recommendation algorithm make it effortless to find content you are interested in.  

However, some might say it is too accessible. The positive reinforcement loop of the site makes it is very easy to spend multiple hours watching videos. I have personally experienced this which led to the disabling of watch history for my account. 

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