Usability Study on YouTube~

 Like carpark coupons, MediaCorp artists like Zoe Tay, Lee Nan Xing which were known as <UNBEATABLES> have been replaced by You-tubers and YouTube Channels.

My two kids (aged 8 and 10) are fans of Tan Jian Hao, Sis vs Bro (Karina and Ronald Calor), PinkFong (with their famous BabyShark). I have been converted….literally when my YouTube playlist recommendations are plastered with my kids’ preferences. YouTube must be really easy to use, even toddlers in Food courts and MRT also know how to use them… that spurred my interest to learn more on this video streaming platform.

When I found this paper that was done up in 2017, it looked at ease of use, usefulness and satisfaction of users with combination of recording videos, mouse and keyboard heat map. There were observed difficulties in using it at the first moment but users would be able to get the hang of it rather easily. It shows how usable YouTube website especially in the learnability and memorability aspects.

While This paper aims on addressing gaps in the usability of YouTube website especially for the main features such as login, upload, share, subscribe and change language, content location, and restricted mode, it was stated that all ten participants were males and 15 years old.  I would think the consideration of availability of participants and cost constraints did place a limitation on the variety on the participants’ sample group. Students with zero budget and coupled with a tight timeline, they could only rely on their course-mates and friends.

The 3 hypotheses looked at:

A.      How easy the interface was (lesser clicks means easier to navigate)

B.      How satisfied participants were with the interface

C.      How well the process flow was designed (the better, the faster they can complete the tasks)

 

What actually caught me was the suggestions:

1.       Including the sign-up button on the actual page back in 2017 and YouTube actually now has it (circled in red in screenshot below).  

2.       Allowing users to sign-up / in using other than Google Account. This functionality also been included in YouTube

1	2
3	4

 It just mean that YouTube definitely have a more comprehensive Usability Testing to ensure that even the platform keeps evolving to be one of the most enjoyed and easy to use platform.

In conclusion, based on the usability study, YouTube is well organized, clean, very useful, and easy to use, respondents were able to learn and memorize the task in short time which mean the YouTube websites is highly usable.

References:

Mohd Nur Faiz Abd Razak, Azham Hussain, & Mohd Maizan Fishol Hamdi, 2017, Usability study of youtube websites for Malaysian teenagers