APP CRITIQUE: INSTAGRAM SAVE

While navigating YouTube, I often find myself saving videos to a playlist in order to watch them at a later time. Saving all of the videos, I intend to revisit, to a single playlist will cause the list to become cluttered and overwhelming to browse over time. Therefore, I often categorize videos I save by topics of interests, such as product design, architecture, lifestyle, comedy, and news.

Although, it would be nice to have the ease of scanning through fewer than ten categories, the hard (not so hard) truth is that I have over 50 categorized playlists 🥴.

I’ve been watching YouTube for over 10 years, so its only fitting that I’ve amassed hundreds of videos by now. Due to being a YouTube binge watcher and a stickler for clarity, I’ve resorted to subcategorizing my videos to keep my playlists simple and clean.

Unfortunately, having numerous playlists makes the process of archiving a video more cumbersome, because YouTube lacks a search field element within their “save to playlist” feature. This process is even more complicated by the fact that the playlists are not sorted alphabetically within the save component. I take at least 3 laps from top to bottom of the “save to” list before I finally spot the playlist I’m seeking to store a new video.

This arduous game of finding a needle in the haystack often leads to me abandoning the video all together. However, it has also inspired my quest to explore a better solution for accessing playlists within the “save to” feature

EXISTING PRODUCT

Solution Prototype

Problem
Users are unable to search for playlists within the "Save to Playlist" feature on YouTube.
Pain Point
The user repeatedly loops through an unsorted list before reaching their target.
How Might We? (HMW)
Enable users to instantly locate their targeted playlist during the process of saving a video?
Solution
Create a search field and sorting feature within the “Save to Playlist” component.

Interactive Prototype

solution

For the prototype solution, I opted to maintain Google’s brand guidelines for the visual design of the elements included within the “save to playlist” feature. I implemented a search field within the “save to playlist” component and instructed the item list to sort alphabetically upon character input.

Prototype Directions

  1. Open the interactive Figma prototype by selecting the full screen symbol at the top right of the presentation (fig. 1a)
  2. Scroll through listed items on prototype (optional)
  3. Navigate to search field
  4. Type “f” or “F”
  5. Select Figma (end of process)
  • Press “r” or “R” to reset presentation 

CREDITS

Product Design + UX Research