YouTube Groups
This project was for a design class at UCSD. The assignment was to do an unsolicited redesign on a product that solved a problem related to virtual communication.
Background
Churches thrive on in-person gatherings, usually with large amounts of people. When people attend church in person, they get to see a lot of people in one place that they don’t see throughout the week. They also hug each other and make connections through eye contact and nonverbal communication During the pandemic, such gatherings have become restricted. Many people within churches rely on such in-person gatherings to maintain personal connections. An example of something that people do together in church that isn’t the same online is singing songs. Much like going to a concert is different than just listening to music at home. Meetings of small groups within churches have leveraged online tools such as Zoom to continue to meet together in a safe way. Online meetings like these still lack the intimacy that many church-goers enjoy when meeting face to face.
Problem Statement
Because of the pandemic, churches, which traditionally rely on large in-person gatherings, have had to move church services online. Church gatherings, which generally involve more intimate personal connections than jobs or school, lack the personal connections people expect. When attending church services online , people want to be able to see each other and to communicate casually as they would in an in-person setting, but have a hard time doing so in an online environment.
Finding out what people want
My main goal in conducting research was to find out more about people’s experience with attending church services online. I chose to do interviews because I wanted to be able to dig a little deeper and find out what specific aspects of meeting in person they missed. Doing a survey might get me general answers such as finding in-person church services more personal and doing an observation would be difficult because an online church service is mostly passive rather than active such as ordering food from a delivery service. I conducted eight interviews. Most of my participants are regular church attendees who are active in the church community and desire to be connected in person and attend church regularly online. There could be implications for the research for people who don’t attend church regularly. Attending church services online provides an easy way for people who might be busy or not ready to jump into fully joining a church community.
What people are missing
The main thing I found was that online meetings are not as personal as in-person meetings. You can’t get a sense of peoples’ body language. When meeting together in a program like Zoom for midweek church meetings or watching church services on YouTube, if there are too many people, it is difficult to maintain a more personal atmosphere. Specifically with YouTube, when watching a live stream of a church service, you can use the live chat, but it is just one general chat, you cannot chat with a specific person or even a smaller group. One person I interviewed said that they want to be able to see the faces of other people attending the service. They wanted something similar to a Zoom layout on YouTube while watching services live.
Another finding was that whatever platform people were using to connect with groups online, the larger the group, the harder it was for less dominant personalities to join conversations or the harder it was to keep conversations going since people interact naturally with smaller groups in-person rather than in larger groups.
User flows for getting into a group on YouTube either through a direct link or joining a group from the app.
User Personas
Dave
Favorite part of church is the music
Loves listening to music and singing with other people
Easily distracted when watching church online
Loves connecting with people in the chat
Amanda
Loves listening to podcasts
Doesn’t speak up in Zoom meetings when others are dominating the conversation
Comfortable with technology, but spends a lot of time on her computer for work
Favorite part of church service is the lesson
Likes seeing people’s faces during church.
Competitive Analysis
Zoom
Has video chat
Allows you to watch something using screen share
You can text chat
Can’t see all participants and shared screen at the same time
Can watch videos with others
Has text chat
No video chat
Zoom and Facebook are popular alternatives to YouTube for churches to livestream their services. Zoom allows people to have a small video chat group that they can interact with during service, but if you are watching a video, someone has to share their screen and you can’t see other people on mobile.
Facebook allows you to watch videos and have live text chat, but it doesn’t allow you to have a video chat session. Allowing users to have video chat native to YouTube will allow them to watch church services together without having to use multiple apps.
Low Fidelity Prototypes
Join Group
Group List
Group View
Alternate Group List
Group Cards
Alternate Chat View
What users said
I tested both versions of the flow with two users. They both got through the flow pretty easily. One user didn’t understand at first that it was a clickable prototype. Once they realized that though, they got through it quickly. They both liked the second flow more. The bigger group cards in the second screen felt better to them. In the third screen, the chat in the second flow being in its own separate section was preferred. Being able to minimize the chat was something both users wanted.
I also showed users the alternative group list screen that shows the user icons of who is in the group. This gives a better representation of what group it is.
When testing, a couple other issues also came up. For the text chat, should users in a group be able to engage in the chat with everyone watching the video, only the people in their group, or both? Also, how are groups created and who can create them? This isn’t part of my user flow, but it is an important consideration. One of the users asked whether participants would be able to stay in the group to discuss a live stream even after it ends.
Point of view
Users should be given as much information as possible about the groups when they are choosing which one to join. When in a group, the group should be the main focus, but users should also be able to engage with a global chat for the video. The group should also persist after a livestream is over, but I need to figure out a reasonable amount of time for this. YouTube is a video watching platform and not a chat platform, but it makes sense that people might want to talk after a livestream and not be cut off immediately.
High Fidelity Mockups
Group Join Button
Group Selection
Group Chat
This version has only one group card per row and makes each group card wider, allowing the user to see more people in the group.
This version is a variation of the previous one, but gets rid of the borders around the card.
Alternate view of the group video chat with fewer video feeds per row and space between each thumbnail.
This view shows the text chat below the video and shows the video feeds bleeding off the bottom of the screen if you were to have more than 9 people.
User Feedback
I reached out to the people that I had interviewed initially. I got two responses. The first response was that the horizontal groups not in cards were the best way to see groups because it gives it more space and doesn’t feel cramped. The other person said that the group selection screen with cards two across was better because they wanted to be able to see more of who was in each group easier. Someone pointed out in my feedback that it isn’t obvious how someone was supposed to join a group and go from the second screen to the third. I was intending to keep the layout and actions as close to what YouTube uses as possible. When scrolling through videos, if you want to watch one, there isn’t a button that says “watch video”, but instead you just click on the thumbnail or the title. My initial thought was to just have users click on the group that they wanted to join in order to join it, but this does present complications. For example, if a user clicks on a video that they didn’t intend to watch, they can simply go back without any problem, but if a user clicks on a group that they don’t want to join, it can create an awkward moment when they show up in the group to others and then quickly leave. This might lead to them being overly timid and potentially even not using the group chat function.
For the actual group chat screen, someone mentioned that having the video feeds be three wide across the screen. This makes each individual face smaller and not as much of a focus. Also, someone mentioned that there is no way to exit out of the group chat. A question also arose of whether a user would stay in a video or voice chat if they exited the screen where everyone shows up on, similar to how you can stay in a zoom call even if you aren’t actively looking at that screen. Also, whether a user would be able to quickly join a group again if they exited the group, or if they would have to go through the group selection screen again.
In the last alternate screen for the group chat, I wanted the global text chat to automatically be open rather than have the usual options and buttons available. Users still wanted to be able to access other actions from the group screen.
Side by Side
Group Selection Screen
This is the side by side of the group selection screen. I wanted to use the feedback and goals of the users to make the screen usable. I made the groups horizontal so people could see more groups on the screen but they can horizontally scroll through the groups to see everyone in the group. There is also a join button that makes it clear how to join the group. If someone simply clicks on the group card they won’t automatically be entered into the group. I kept the X button so that users could exit out of this screen and just go back to the default screen if they don’t want to join a group.
Group Video Screen
This is my side by side comparison of the group chat screen I didn’t want to change things too drastically, but I wanted to address some of the concerns about leaving the group and getting back. The X button closes the chat window, but leaves you in the group so you can still talk, but the leave button completely exits from the group.
Next Steps
This project was a quarter long project, so there were a some suggestions from users for features that I couldn’t implement in the time frame allotted. Given more time to focus on this project, these are some of the things that I would want to address to make the YouTube Groups feature more complete.
Group Creation
In this project, I focused on what the flow of joining and being in a group would be like, but I would want to address the flow of creating and managing a group.
Group Persistence
One issue that was brought up was what happens when a video that the group is watching ends. This is particularly relevant when a video is short. There may not be enough time to have a discussion by the time the video ends. There needs to be some way for group members to choose another video to watch.