My role

I was the designer for the project. I came up with the concept, created wireframes, supported research, proposed the visual direction, and produced production assets and redlines. I worked with a visual designer for the final illustration assets. I also lead the collaboration between the engineers, content team, visual designer, and copy writer to make sure we were all in line.

About the project

YouTube Kids is a separate stand alone app from YouTube on iOS, Android, and most smart TVs and is dedicated to bringing a safer YouTube experience to kids. For this project the content team at YouTube Kids was interested in introducing a new special video everyday in the YouTube Kids app during December 2018 as part of the Holiday takeover. So, I took the lead to figure out the best way to make this special video more enticing and engaging for kids based on research I’ve done in the past and collaborated cross functionally to make an experience that would be really delightful and enjoyable to kids during the holiday month. I also took this opportunity to widen the idea into a reusable platform to highlight relevant content to promote greater discovery and diversity of YouTube Kids videos.

This feature launched on iOS and Android on phone and tablet in December 2018 and brought more attention and awareness to the special video.

What Gift of the day is about

Through previous research, we found that to make a particular video more engaging, using a some type of concealment was a great way to introduce more content diversity into a kid’s experience because it provided context to why this video was being highlighted. For this experience, we choose the idea of using presents for the concealment because the holidays mean different things for different kids and families, but overall it’s a time to celebrate and appreciate one another by sharing things we care about. Whether that be food / songs / traditions / etc. And more importantly, it’s a TIME FOR PRESENTS!!!

So, how does this apply to YouTube Kids? Well, in the world of YouTube Kids, you have a YouTube Kids family. A wide range of characters there to support you through the ups and downs in the app and lead you in the right direction. So during the holiday season, these characters can share their favorite things from YouTube Kids.

Each character has their own personality and interest and gives kids a present they think is really great. For instance, Shy Panda is learning how to be less shy and more courageous and wants to share videos about how to be confident or how to make friends. Or the Beaker Brothers love science and they want to share their favorite DIY science project videos.

So… how did we get here?

When I joined the YouTube Kids team, I realized the team had trouble prioritizing which kid feature to build. So, I held a cross functional brainstorm with engineers, product managers, and designers to figure out all the different kid features we could possibly build. Since we still had trouble figuring out which idea to pursue, I proposed we create a platform that would allow us to test all these ideas. We then took all these ideas to kid research. We then broke out the research into 2 parts.

Part 1 kid research : Group sessions

The first part was a group session with 5 to 10 yr olds where we aimed to explore, understand, and narrow down the ideas with kids. First we had the kids draw out draw out what their ideal YouTube Kids experience would be like and then had them evaluate our ideas using a 5-point likert scale, or smiley faces.

We placed cut out smiley faces on the floor and had kids stand behind the smiley face that best represented how they felt about an idea. This helped us narrow down the ideas that came from the brainstorm to the ones that best resonated with kids.

Part 2 kid research : 1:1 sessions

We then took the best ideas and I prototyped them in YouTube Kids so we understood how the kids reacted to an actual YouTube Kids implementation of the idea.

What we realized from this study was that for a kid who’s not a super fan of the app and has a hard time deciding what video to watch, they’re coming to the app to relieve boredom. When they can’t find a video they like, they can be pretty frustrated. The idea of having mystery gifts with a variety of different things inside really appealed to kids because it would give them curiosity and excitement to figure out what’s inside and an ability for us to provide context on why we’re recommending this video and something new and interesting to watch that they wouldn’t have otherwise thought about.

So, we came up with platform to help kids engage with new and diverse content by contextualizing the experience and were able to implement a version of it through Gift of the Day.

Research with kids is a sensitive topic. For more information, please contact me.