7 ms·

Given the increasingly poor state of some of Google's biggest properties (YouTube is a prime offender, its user experience only ever seems to get worse) I'm obv

Given the increasingly poor state of some of Google's biggest properties (YouTube is a prime offender, its user experience only ever seems to get worse) I'm obviously surprised to hear this.

sokoloff 9y ago
The YouTube terribleness is a direct result of trying to monetize the property, not technical incompetence.
mswift42 9y ago
What's terrible about YouTube's UX ?
- sokoloff 9y ago
  Core use case: As a visitor, I want to watch a video that someone linked. The chance that I first want to see a non-skippable video (or video skippable only after 5 seconds) is vanishingly small yet that's what the YouTube UX frequently provides.
  - jaymzcampbell 9y ago
    I know where your coming from because this annoys me when I share videos too, but this is the choice of the video creator. So although YouTube are facilitating it, I'm not sure it's their "fault" if users choose to set a particular ad format (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2467968?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2467968?hl=en-GB) - they could have it set to banners instead of skippables for instance.
  - kough 9y ago
    Oh that sounds like a bug, you should report it – they'll probably fix it for a HN commenter!
    - sokoloff 9y ago
      Snark noted; my claim was simply that it provides a poor user experience, not that it was unintentional.
- jhasse 9y ago
  The comment section for example.
- DanBC 9y ago
  Comments are often toxic, and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix that. It's impossible to know without watching something whether it's full of swearing or homophobic / misogynistic / transphobic hate speech. Ads are not targeted to the actual viewer, but to some combination of regular browser user and main youtube user. this means that children will be shown ads for alcohol or gambling. (note this goes against what Youtube says here about complying with local law: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=e... Note that this is something all ad networks get wrong, and it's likely they're going to see regulation in the uk at some point if they don't fix it.) It's hard to know before clicking a link whether it's sponsored content or not. (in the UK sponsored videos need to be clearly identifiable before the user clicks the link or clicks play. in the US sponsored content needs to be clearly identified). If two people (eg a parent and their child) watch Youtube the recommendations fail hard. If a single person watches youtube the recommendations are pretty poor.
  - cheetos 9y ago
    The way to fix comments is clear: human moderators. Since this can't br automated (yet), Google doesn't do it.
    - iratewizard 9y ago
      It's not clear. Human moderators are not the magic pill that fixes everything. Google has taken enough flak for injecting far too much liberal bias into their system and human moderators will only outrage more people. You may see it as righteous when opinions you don't like are swept off of websites you use. Everything is neat, tidy, and non-challenging to you. It's a bit Orwellian to me.
      - applecrazy 9y ago
        Google has an automated API in beta to detect toxic comments. I've been playing around with it and it works pretty well and could solve the human moderation problem.
    - 9y ago
- virtualized 9y ago
  When I open a video for watching it later, I pause it immediately when I expect the initialization of the player to be finished. The player has a bug that makes it resume playback when the initialization has actually finished in the background. YouTube remembers where you stopped watching a video.. sometimes. Maybe. Usually it just plays from the beginning anyway. The "already seen" marker on a thumbnail is very often missing. Recommendations are awful. Subscriptions have been broken intentionally so that you just see a subset of the new videos. Many YouTubers are warning about this problem. YouTube unsubscribes people randomly from channels and denies that this actually happens. The volume control slider is hidden by default for no reason. The bar with the video controls overlaps the video content for no reason. It could simply be placed below the video and be always visible. The current design only makes sense in fullscreen mode. This is an example for harmful consistency in UI design.
- greggman 9y ago
  The chromecast experience is awful for me. I think the assumed I'd only ever have one youtube tab open but that's now how I use youtube. I Ctrl/Cmd Click videos, have lots of window open, want to be able to add and/or control the chromecast youtube playback from all tabs but only one is active and even then it's pretty awful. No way to set the playback position if you've gone off looking for more videos to play back. If you're watching any kind of lectures/ted talks or anything else that you'd like to playback at a faster speed there's no way to do it. it's also super flaky often getting lost/unresponsive. I have to manually disconnect chrome, close all the youtube tabs and start over. Other non-chromecast youtube issues are the fact that it knows everything I've watched but still 5% to 25% of the stuff it's recommending is stuff I've already watched. If they want me to watch more it really needs to be 100% new stuff. The hidden ways to find my own videos or playlists always drive me nuts. Because the UI changes based on width the options disappear. Another minor grievance, playlists with deleted videos don't show the titles. I have playlists with missing videos. I'd like to know what I lost. The name of the deleted video would be super helpful. A major one for me is the volume controls on chromecast. Chromecast is built into my TV (Sony Android). The issue is no device I've ever owned in my life controls the TV volume from the device. Instead at most it controls it's own output level to the TV but the TV itself controls its own volume. So, the Chromecast youtube experience is that the volume control in the webpage directly controls the TV's volume. You can imagine this has woken up my neighbors serval times late at night when it decides to set my TV at full volume
  - Sujan 9y ago
    So you are mainly unhappy with Chromecast and its integration in Youtube, right?
eddz 9y ago
To be fair, this post is about Google's UX for developers, which is admittedly very good. The APIs and supporting documentation and guides for many of Google's properties usually do an excellent job at appealing to skill levels that range from beginner to expert.
fridek 9y ago
Google has tens of thousands of employees. It's also an incredibly diverse place where all kinds of mindsets manifest in different products and publications.

Given the increasingly poor state of some of Google's biggest properties (YouTube is a prime offender, its user experience only ever seems to get worse) I'm obviously surprised to hear this.

sokoloff 9y ago

The YouTube terribleness is a direct result of trying to monetize the property, not technical incompetence.

mswift42 9y ago

What's terrible about YouTube's UX ?

sokoloff 9y ago
Core use case: As a visitor, I want to watch a video that someone linked. The chance that I first want to see a non-skippable video (or video skippable only after 5 seconds) is vanishingly small yet that's what the YouTube UX frequently provides.
- jaymzcampbell 9y ago
  I know where your coming from because this annoys me when I share videos too, but this is the choice of the video creator. So although YouTube are facilitating it, I'm not sure it's their "fault" if users choose to set a particular ad format (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2467968?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2467968?hl=en-GB) - they could have it set to banners instead of skippables for instance.
- kough 9y ago
  Oh that sounds like a bug, you should report it – they'll probably fix it for a HN commenter!
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    Snark noted; my claim was simply that it provides a poor user experience, not that it was unintentional.
jhasse 9y ago
The comment section for example.
DanBC 9y ago
Comments are often toxic, and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix that. It's impossible to know without watching something whether it's full of swearing or homophobic / misogynistic / transphobic hate speech. Ads are not targeted to the actual viewer, but to some combination of regular browser user and main youtube user. this means that children will be shown ads for alcohol or gambling. (note this goes against what Youtube says here about complying with local law: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6012382?hl=e... Note that this is something all ad networks get wrong, and it's likely they're going to see regulation in the uk at some point if they don't fix it.) It's hard to know before clicking a link whether it's sponsored content or not. (in the UK sponsored videos need to be clearly identifiable before the user clicks the link or clicks play. in the US sponsored content needs to be clearly identified). If two people (eg a parent and their child) watch Youtube the recommendations fail hard. If a single person watches youtube the recommendations are pretty poor.
- cheetos 9y ago
  The way to fix comments is clear: human moderators. Since this can't br automated (yet), Google doesn't do it.
  - iratewizard 9y ago
    It's not clear. Human moderators are not the magic pill that fixes everything. Google has taken enough flak for injecting far too much liberal bias into their system and human moderators will only outrage more people. You may see it as righteous when opinions you don't like are swept off of websites you use. Everything is neat, tidy, and non-challenging to you. It's a bit Orwellian to me.
    - applecrazy 9y ago
      Google has an automated API in beta to detect toxic comments. I've been playing around with it and it works pretty well and could solve the human moderation problem.
  - 9y ago
virtualized 9y ago
When I open a video for watching it later, I pause it immediately when I expect the initialization of the player to be finished. The player has a bug that makes it resume playback when the initialization has actually finished in the background. YouTube remembers where you stopped watching a video.. sometimes. Maybe. Usually it just plays from the beginning anyway. The "already seen" marker on a thumbnail is very often missing. Recommendations are awful. Subscriptions have been broken intentionally so that you just see a subset of the new videos. Many YouTubers are warning about this problem. YouTube unsubscribes people randomly from channels and denies that this actually happens. The volume control slider is hidden by default for no reason. The bar with the video controls overlaps the video content for no reason. It could simply be placed below the video and be always visible. The current design only makes sense in fullscreen mode. This is an example for harmful consistency in UI design.
greggman 9y ago
The chromecast experience is awful for me. I think the assumed I'd only ever have one youtube tab open but that's now how I use youtube. I Ctrl/Cmd Click videos, have lots of window open, want to be able to add and/or control the chromecast youtube playback from all tabs but only one is active and even then it's pretty awful. No way to set the playback position if you've gone off looking for more videos to play back. If you're watching any kind of lectures/ted talks or anything else that you'd like to playback at a faster speed there's no way to do it. it's also super flaky often getting lost/unresponsive. I have to manually disconnect chrome, close all the youtube tabs and start over. Other non-chromecast youtube issues are the fact that it knows everything I've watched but still 5% to 25% of the stuff it's recommending is stuff I've already watched. If they want me to watch more it really needs to be 100% new stuff. The hidden ways to find my own videos or playlists always drive me nuts. Because the UI changes based on width the options disappear. Another minor grievance, playlists with deleted videos don't show the titles. I have playlists with missing videos. I'd like to know what I lost. The name of the deleted video would be super helpful. A major one for me is the volume controls on chromecast. Chromecast is built into my TV (Sony Android). The issue is no device I've ever owned in my life controls the TV volume from the device. Instead at most it controls it's own output level to the TV but the TV itself controls its own volume. So, the Chromecast youtube experience is that the volume control in the webpage directly controls the TV's volume. You can imagine this has woken up my neighbors serval times late at night when it decides to set my TV at full volume
- Sujan 9y ago
  So you are mainly unhappy with Chromecast and its integration in Youtube, right?

eddz 9y ago

To be fair, this post is about Google's UX for developers, which is admittedly very good. The APIs and supporting documentation and guides for many of Google's properties usually do an excellent job at appealing to skill levels that range from beginner to expert.

fridek 9y ago

Google has tens of thousands of employees. It's also an incredibly diverse place where all kinds of mindsets manifest in different products and publications.