Youtube Shorts
YouTube Shorts are YouTube's short-form, vertical video feature. Ranging from a few seconds up to 3 minutes long, they are designed for quick consumption on mobile devices and feature infinite vertical scrolling.
Case Study, San Jose City College, 2024, Student Work
The Ask
This is a case study done for and presented at San Jose City College. I am not affiliated, associated and/or endorsed by YouTube, Google, or Alphabet.
This case study was done over the course of four weeks; made to use a variety of methods to find, analyze, and improve the YouTube Shorts Platform.
The Opportunity
YouTube Shorts was launched globally in 2021, and is the one of the youngest of the short-form content platforms launched by a large global social media company and possibly one of the lowest performing of them, with Instagram Reels generating up to 140 billion views daily, while YouTube Shorts generates about 70 billion views.
So what else can be done to improve YouTube Shorts and make it a stronger platform?
The Solution
Platforms like YouTube Shorts aim to offer a smooth, easily understandable entertainment experience, but currently, several things prevent it from reaching that goal.
Recommendations include:
Adjusting User Interface, some items are currently unclear or inconsistent over the course of the user's experience
Allow flexibility with sharing content- in both interviews and surveys, people noting wanting to share content with their peers, but the lack of a messaging system or integrated sharing methods prevented users from sharing content.
Better establishing YouTube Shorts as a platform, as of right now, YouTube Shorts and its parent platform YouTube function together, results for one will show up in the other, and it's a blur to establish where one ends and begins, making it difficult for someone who wants to stay in YouTube Shorts, or stay out of, to figure out where they are.
The Process
We started with creating a goal for our users.
Visitors should be able to access YouTube Shorts and create a curated experience.
To test this, we reviewed the process of creating an account, interacting, sharing, and saving videos.
To create a quick overview of our findings, used Nielson's Heuristic values to create a comprehensive list of potential problems with the platform.
With this, we were able to Identify several key issues right off the bat:
Visibility and System Status
Captions and Login Status are unclear
Users aren’t able to tell if they’re logged in or if captions are active.Consistency and Standards
Button styles, account creation elements and filters are inconsistent.Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
There is no separation between Shorts and YouTube videos. Options for sharing videos are limited, and there is no way to go back after entering data during account creation.
We then conducted surveys to better understand the platform’s Strengths and Weaknesses, the primary motivation behind user engagement, and gauge interest in a direct messaging system for Shorts.
Half of users noted they used Shorts once a day, or more
Most users primarily use YouTube Shorts for quick entertainment, or to check trends
A third of users noted encountering unwanted content occasionally or more
Three-quarters of users thought they would NOT be very likely to use a direct messaging system
The results of the survey shocked us, and we invited four of the survey participant for interviews were to better understand how they used the platform, including how & why they share videos.
Douglas
Computer programmer
“I wish that it only copied the link…having some stuff like “check out this YouTube Short” and the URL is a bit annoying”
Serena
Software developer
“Copy-Pasting a link to someone is easy (on a computer)… I can’t be bothered to share via mobile”
Morgan
Media Manager
“It’s frustrating when the sharing isn’t intuitive enough to remember it’s a specific video (that I liked once) than my entire shorts page.”
Samuel
University Student
“I don’t share Shorts with others because they’re a pain to share. On desktop it’s fine, but I don’t want to watch Shorts on desktop.”
From these interviews, found that:
Everyone noted difficulty within the mobile platform when sharing content
Many noted frustration with only being able to share content through other means of communication
Many noted that Shorts feels much more disorganized than competitors, due to lack of content filters
The Reflection
This project pushed me outside my comfort zone. Many of the ideas and methods we used were unfamiliar to me, some I'd never encountered before starting. Looking back, I wish I had supplemented what we learned in class with outside research, that extra context would have helped me make stronger decisions throughout, rather than relying solely on what was covered in lectures. I think the final result held up reasonably well, but there are specific areas I can now identify for improvement, and I expect I'll get better at spotting them as I gain more experience.
Team coordination was our biggest weakness. Our group of four never established clear roles or a schedule for working outside of class, which made it hard to stay in touch and slowed down our ability to build the presentation together. At one point, this lack of communication led me to build an entire section from scratch, not realizing a teammate had already put together a file covering the same material.
The most difficult stretch came in the days before our Final Case Study presentation, when two team members stopped responding and were absent entirely on presentation day. Yusuf and I had to adapt quickly, cutting our losses on what we couldn't recover and presenting with what we had. It wasn't the outcome we planned for, but I'm proud of how we handled it. We kept things moving and delivered under pressure.