8 ms·

I mean YouTube UI is a disgrace really, what is it about big companies that stop them from being able to do design properly (even Apple post Jobs is starting to

I mean YouTube UI is a disgrace really, what is it about big companies that stop them from being able to do design properly (even Apple post Jobs is starting to experience this).

Kiro 10y ago
Do you have any examples or are you just saying that because you hate big companies?
- Sylos 10y ago
  What he's referring to is subjective for sure, but for example, the Google Search page has lost a lot of UI-options for selecting different search limitations over the past few years. One of the least subjectively dumb decisions that they pushed through, was to change the "+"-operator from making a word obligatory to searching for this word on Google+. This one, I suppose, would go under just straight-up arrogance. In general, though, I would ascribe it to bigger companies having a higher percentage of graphics designers, as opposed to regular programmers working on the UI. And well, programmers will generally put more options and things into a UI than your average UI person. And if you like options and things, then the UI person's UI is subjectively worse.
tdkl 10y ago
It's the result when pendulum swung from Google being out of place regarding design to madness of designers running the show (whitespaces, huge fonts, images on a desktop intended website). It's engineered to cater the most average Internet user. A drone. Stick out of the average with your wishes and you're out of luck.
erelde 10y ago
One possible reason: think of the groups that formed on Facebook each time they changed the design, they didn't have any impact but they still existed that part of users.
darajava 10y ago
I think YouTube is amazing!!!
ManlyBread 10y ago
They once got everything right then screwed it up with the Google+ integration.
csydas 10y ago
Probably because it becomes design by committee at a certain point, and some functionality interrupts or excludes other design intents by nature. For example, in the linked extension, it overlays (replaces?) the youtube recommended videos once you submit a search query - as part of the recommendation stuff seems to be driving high-traffic related vids to the viewer, many of which are ad-monetized, this has a marginal impact on some revenue figures. How much I wouldn't dare make a guess at, but I do not feel it's hard to imagine wanting to keep that space operating "as is" for Youtube's benefit. Other bad UI changes probably stem just from apathy, a decision having been made somewhere when no one considered a better alternative, and the change would be considered too much work for whatever reason. These aren't necessarily satisfactory answers as to why bad design sneaks through, but they are answers.
- smaudet 10y ago
  I agree - design by committee is probably the culprit. Generally, when one (or a couple) experienced designers get their hands on a UI, it turns out alright. Its the 'mish-mash' effect where multiple people try to control the look and feel, where things go south. This can be because of a literal committee, but it can also be due to poorly designed software trying to take away design decisions from the designer. Just take a look at the mess CSS made of things in the browser. For years, it was easier to design something that looked good by just hard-coding an interface in a native language...
- nl 10y ago
  @smaudet - you are hellbanned. It looks like all your comments since your very first one have been pretty reasonable. Not sure if this is something that can be fixed, so you may want to consider creating a new account?
  - prawn 10y ago
    Remember that you can visit a [dead] comment and click the vouch link to vote for it to be revived or possibly for the user's status to be reviewed. @dang can probably clarify; I can't remember the specifics.
MichaelBurge 10y ago
What's wrong with it, exactly? The video player gives me fewer problems than other players, and the site as a whole seems to have everything needed to watch videos.
- RGamma 10y ago
  Aside from there being bugs, like videos not appearing in your subscriptions page, missing thumbnails, video (you just hear the audio of it) continuing to play in the background while you can browse the site normally? One option I'm missing is as simple as reversing playlists (often they are in counter-chronological order when they shouldn't be) or that I can't order the subscribed channels on the left panel manually (I have so many subscriptions, that I have to get to the subscriptions manager, scroll all the way down and go to the second page to find some of my favorite channels) or infinite scroll which makes the viewport jump around when using the back button jump around and generally feels slow and clunky (although YT's implementation is not the worst out there at least.) The player itself is quite nice here on Chromium (not HW-accelerated but that's a longstanding Chromium/Intel bug), I agree. Otherwise the site is relatively fast and reliable; I like especially the video streaming smoothness and automatic quality detection, which is lightyears ahead of anything I have seen elsewhere.
- smoyer 10y ago
  I don't have issues with the page design like the grand-parent does, but I'd like a way to make the video go "full window" in addition to "full screen" (yes I can fake this to some extent).
- cstrahan 10y ago
  Among other things: They ought to have a clear indicator of thumbs up/down ratio on each video thumbnail (a couple pixel bar at the bottom colored green/red would easily do the trick). That would save plenty of time that would otherwise be spent watching some troll video or annoying commentary/reaction edit of some other person's work.
yoo1I 10y ago
Do you mind sharing what you don't like about it? I'm honestly curious.
dexterdog 10y ago
It becomes incredibly difficult to fit new features into an interface that everybody knows without changing it and when you change something like this you alienate and non-power users which makes them watch less which means less advertising.
hyperdunc 10y ago
The Android app isn't very good, especially with regards to commenting: notifications sometimes don't come through, the layout is inflexible, and it isn't possible to edit or vote on comments.
virtualized 10y ago
This is my personal experience as a YouTube user: - There are these weirdly looking fixed (Googleish) bars for no other reason than to steal my screen space. - Recommendations are mostly awful (10 things that will shock you!) or videos I have already watched. - The subscription to a whole channel is a dumb concept. I usually care only about specific series of videos, not the whole channel. Example: New movie reviews, not the bullshit rambling filler videos. The effect is that I often unsubscribe from the whole channel even though there is some interesting content. - The video controls cover part of the video for no apparent reason. - The volume control slider disappears for no reason when you move the cursor away from it. - There are wrong defaults like showing annotations or autoplay. - Annotations are abused so much that you cannot leave them enabled. - Obvious missing feature: Next/previous buttons for videos that belong to a series. Playlists are used as a bad workaround. - I can only use YouTube on my Desktops because that's where the ad blocker works. - Obvious missing feature: Donations to content creators. I don't think this is a big company problem. It is a culture problem. When your boss has no taste and does not take criticism very well, you end up with wrecks like Twitter, Google+ or YouTube.
- witty_username 10y ago
  > I can only use YouTube on my Desktops because that's where the ad blocker works. Why? The ads aren't that bad. > There are wrong defaults like showing annotations or autoplay. From a business perspective, autoplay is good as it leads to more videos being watched.
  - soneil 10y ago
    > Why? The ads aren't that bad. Honestly, the ads are easily the worst part of youtube for me. I'm logged into my google account, everywhere, all the time. And yet they still appear to go out of their way to find the least relevant ads they can find. Adsense doesn't seem to suffer the same, so this disconnect has always puzzled me.
    - kagamine 10y ago
      I have had a 4 minute long song in a style of music I NEVER listen to as a YT ad before. I'm not going to listen to some 2nd rate rock moaner for 4 minutes between every 4 minute long weeaboo track I'm trying to listen to.
RankingMember 10y ago
The first thing I think of when I think of places YouTube's UI could be improved would be to simply allow logging in without bringing you to a completely separate screen (the generic Google login screen), which interrupts the content you were viewing.
enibundo 10y ago
That is probably made on porpuse because of their view on user experience is based on "clicking videos". So they want you to click from video to video rather than search your stuff directly.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

I mean YouTube UI is a disgrace really, what is it about big companies that stop them from being able to do design properly (even Apple post Jobs is starting to experience this).

Kiro 10y ago

Do you have any examples or are you just saying that because you hate big companies?

Sylos 10y ago
What he's referring to is subjective for sure, but for example, the Google Search page has lost a lot of UI-options for selecting different search limitations over the past few years. One of the least subjectively dumb decisions that they pushed through, was to change the "+"-operator from making a word obligatory to searching for this word on Google+. This one, I suppose, would go under just straight-up arrogance. In general, though, I would ascribe it to bigger companies having a higher percentage of graphics designers, as opposed to regular programmers working on the UI. And well, programmers will generally put more options and things into a UI than your average UI person. And if you like options and things, then the UI person's UI is subjectively worse.

tdkl 10y ago

It's the result when pendulum swung from Google being out of place regarding design to madness of designers running the show (whitespaces, huge fonts, images on a desktop intended website). It's engineered to cater the most average Internet user. A drone. Stick out of the average with your wishes and you're out of luck.

erelde 10y ago

One possible reason: think of the groups that formed on Facebook each time they changed the design, they didn't have any impact but they still existed that part of users.

darajava 10y ago

I think YouTube is amazing!!!

ManlyBread 10y ago

They once got everything right then screwed it up with the Google+ integration.

csydas 10y ago

Probably because it becomes design by committee at a certain point, and some functionality interrupts or excludes other design intents by nature. For example, in the linked extension, it overlays (replaces?) the youtube recommended videos once you submit a search query - as part of the recommendation stuff seems to be driving high-traffic related vids to the viewer, many of which are ad-monetized, this has a marginal impact on some revenue figures. How much I wouldn't dare make a guess at, but I do not feel it's hard to imagine wanting to keep that space operating "as is" for Youtube's benefit. Other bad UI changes probably stem just from apathy, a decision having been made somewhere when no one considered a better alternative, and the change would be considered too much work for whatever reason. These aren't necessarily satisfactory answers as to why bad design sneaks through, but they are answers.

smaudet 10y ago
I agree - design by committee is probably the culprit. Generally, when one (or a couple) experienced designers get their hands on a UI, it turns out alright. Its the 'mish-mash' effect where multiple people try to control the look and feel, where things go south. This can be because of a literal committee, but it can also be due to poorly designed software trying to take away design decisions from the designer. Just take a look at the mess CSS made of things in the browser. For years, it was easier to design something that looked good by just hard-coding an interface in a native language...
nl 10y ago
@smaudet - you are hellbanned. It looks like all your comments since your very first one have been pretty reasonable. Not sure if this is something that can be fixed, so you may want to consider creating a new account?
- prawn 10y ago
  Remember that you can visit a [dead] comment and click the vouch link to vote for it to be revived or possibly for the user's status to be reviewed. @dang can probably clarify; I can't remember the specifics.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

What's wrong with it, exactly? The video player gives me fewer problems than other players, and the site as a whole seems to have everything needed to watch videos.

RGamma 10y ago
Aside from there being bugs, like videos not appearing in your subscriptions page, missing thumbnails, video (you just hear the audio of it) continuing to play in the background while you can browse the site normally? One option I'm missing is as simple as reversing playlists (often they are in counter-chronological order when they shouldn't be) or that I can't order the subscribed channels on the left panel manually (I have so many subscriptions, that I have to get to the subscriptions manager, scroll all the way down and go to the second page to find some of my favorite channels) or infinite scroll which makes the viewport jump around when using the back button jump around and generally feels slow and clunky (although YT's implementation is not the worst out there at least.) The player itself is quite nice here on Chromium (not HW-accelerated but that's a longstanding Chromium/Intel bug), I agree. Otherwise the site is relatively fast and reliable; I like especially the video streaming smoothness and automatic quality detection, which is lightyears ahead of anything I have seen elsewhere.
smoyer 10y ago
I don't have issues with the page design like the grand-parent does, but I'd like a way to make the video go "full window" in addition to "full screen" (yes I can fake this to some extent).
cstrahan 10y ago
Among other things: They ought to have a clear indicator of thumbs up/down ratio on each video thumbnail (a couple pixel bar at the bottom colored green/red would easily do the trick). That would save plenty of time that would otherwise be spent watching some troll video or annoying commentary/reaction edit of some other person's work.

yoo1I 10y ago

Do you mind sharing what you don't like about it? I'm honestly curious.

dexterdog 10y ago

It becomes incredibly difficult to fit new features into an interface that everybody knows without changing it and when you change something like this you alienate and non-power users which makes them watch less which means less advertising.

hyperdunc 10y ago

The Android app isn't very good, especially with regards to commenting: notifications sometimes don't come through, the layout is inflexible, and it isn't possible to edit or vote on comments.

virtualized 10y ago

This is my personal experience as a YouTube user: - There are these weirdly looking fixed (Googleish) bars for no other reason than to steal my screen space. - Recommendations are mostly awful (10 things that will shock you!) or videos I have already watched. - The subscription to a whole channel is a dumb concept. I usually care only about specific series of videos, not the whole channel. Example: New movie reviews, not the bullshit rambling filler videos. The effect is that I often unsubscribe from the whole channel even though there is some interesting content. - The video controls cover part of the video for no apparent reason. - The volume control slider disappears for no reason when you move the cursor away from it. - There are wrong defaults like showing annotations or autoplay. - Annotations are abused so much that you cannot leave them enabled. - Obvious missing feature: Next/previous buttons for videos that belong to a series. Playlists are used as a bad workaround. - I can only use YouTube on my Desktops because that's where the ad blocker works. - Obvious missing feature: Donations to content creators. I don't think this is a big company problem. It is a culture problem. When your boss has no taste and does not take criticism very well, you end up with wrecks like Twitter, Google+ or YouTube.

witty_username 10y ago
> I can only use YouTube on my Desktops because that's where the ad blocker works. Why? The ads aren't that bad. > There are wrong defaults like showing annotations or autoplay. From a business perspective, autoplay is good as it leads to more videos being watched.
- soneil 10y ago
  > Why? The ads aren't that bad. Honestly, the ads are easily the worst part of youtube for me. I'm logged into my google account, everywhere, all the time. And yet they still appear to go out of their way to find the least relevant ads they can find. Adsense doesn't seem to suffer the same, so this disconnect has always puzzled me.
  - kagamine 10y ago
    I have had a 4 minute long song in a style of music I NEVER listen to as a YT ad before. I'm not going to listen to some 2nd rate rock moaner for 4 minutes between every 4 minute long weeaboo track I'm trying to listen to.

RankingMember 10y ago

The first thing I think of when I think of places YouTube's UI could be improved would be to simply allow logging in without bringing you to a completely separate screen (the generic Google login screen), which interrupts the content you were viewing.

enibundo 10y ago

That is probably made on porpuse because of their view on user experience is based on "clicking videos". So they want you to click from video to video rather than search your stuff directly.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]