A Product Designer's Perspective on YouTube's Most Replayed Feature
For the unversed, with certain videos on YouTube you can mouse hover the video player slider and explore how the "most replayed" feature works. Here's a random video for your reference. My observations are based on being a YouTube content consumer and a product designer by profession.
1) Impact on Behaviour
For starters, do you think this feature is designed to create certain user behaviour or is this reinforcing latent user behaviour? I think, this feature is creating a new digital-video-consumption behaviour by observing peer viewing patterns. Every video seems to be generating a specific viewing behaviour. The system seems to be averaging and highlighting this behaviour for further consumption, more observation and pattern correction. (Data generated by users is presented back to the users by the system)
While this might look like a simple feature on the surface, I think this feature can influence users beyond compare and has the potential to create a psychological impact on users and eventually irreversible societal impact, considering the sheer number of users consuming, creating and depending on Youtube content, across the world. Let's explore this impact by deconstructing the user experience.
YouTube is more or less telling you what to watch, and what not to watch by making users depend on peer intelligence. An interesting aspect to this argument is if something is "most replayed" it obviously has the propensity to retain and even augment its position and stay the "most replayed" as users are being influenced by the system to consume content at a specific timestamp.
1) Impact on Behaviour
For starters, do you think this feature is designed to create certain user behaviour or is this reinforcing latent user behaviour? I think, this feature is creating a new digital-video-consumption behaviour by observing peer viewing patterns. Every video seems to be generating a specific viewing behaviour. The system seems to be averaging and highlighting this behaviour for further consumption, more observation and pattern correction. (Data generated by users is presented back to the users by the system)
While this might look like a simple feature on the surface, I think this feature can influence users beyond compare and has the potential to create a psychological impact on users and eventually irreversible societal impact, considering the sheer number of users consuming, creating and depending on Youtube content, across the world. Let's explore this impact by deconstructing the user experience.
YouTube is more or less telling you what to watch, and what not to watch by making users depend on peer intelligence. An interesting aspect to this argument is if something is "most replayed" it obviously has the propensity to retain and even augment its position and stay the "most replayed" as users are being influenced by the system to consume content at a specific timestamp.
Influencing users can influence the system. The persuasion principles of social learning and social proof are in full effect in this context. Eventually, by accessing and depending on the "most replayed" feature could impact the way we perceive things and tend to depend more on social takeaways than our own personal takeaways in every video. So far, this was a personal watching experience, now the viewing experience is driven by the collective.
2) Impact on Creators
This feature really helps users when they watch informative content, as they can skip to "most replayed" section of the video, avoid irrelevance, save time and consume smarter and faster. (Clear win for users in this context) However, this potentially impacts the watch hours for creators. (Unless this feature is optional and in the control of creators) I can't make a definitive statement here, however I'm sure they are doing this by design to have an impact on Creators, Consumers, and Advertisers.
Here's one speculative scenario. Placing an ad right at the most-replayed timestamp or after can create revenue. However users get smart eventually and learn to trick a system that can trick them, making the feature's purpose and product design ethics questionable. Here is a fundamental question in this context. What is YT's strategy for creators? Is this a way to lower creator payments by design. Or is this encouraging creators to spread key points in a video to increase overall video length and generate more ad revenue? I'm curious to know.
Likewise, when you add a new feature, do this only after making a comprehensive assessment of its impact on various user groups of your product. Avoid the negative domino effect on your business. Ask if this is inline with your overall UX strategy and product vision.
3) Impact on Advertisers
We just spoke about the impact on creators. Now, it's a no-brainer that Advertisers are impacted as well. People can skip ads (unless you're in premium) and skip to most-replayed, which reduces watch time, canvas and context for advertisers. Again, this is another fundamental question. Anything and everything we do impacts several user groups and this is a practical approach I would recommend to all product management and product design professionals.
User Experience is an outcome of multi-dimensional thinking.
4) Impact on Society
I'm guessing, we might see more restlessness and anxiety and the need to cut to the chase when consuming other forms of digital video content like learning, meetings, infotainment and other content which requires complete audience attention throughout the video and not just its summary or highlights. When a product like YouTube takes centre-stage in how a society creates, learns and functions, it obviously can make a deep and wide irreversible impact on our digital behaviour evolution and future. (Like how Twitter as taught us to keep it short)
Here is biggest downside: Media manipulation
Consider this scenario. If you want to peddle lies, which is the foundation of most peer-peer media and even mass media, all they need to leverage is the "most replayed" feature and boom, you enable mass hysteria through manipulated social learning. Media can present a vested version of truth to a desired audience and actively push viewers to focus on a specific point and manipulate user perception.
As product designers, are we designing the product or is the product designing us?
Who is designing?
Who is shaping the future?
As product designers, we have a responsibility. The question is are you thinking and asking deep questions with respect to your product, its impact on users and society? Think beyond screens, think ecosystems, and think about the impact of your design on our collective future.
2) Impact on Creators
This feature really helps users when they watch informative content, as they can skip to "most replayed" section of the video, avoid irrelevance, save time and consume smarter and faster. (Clear win for users in this context) However, this potentially impacts the watch hours for creators. (Unless this feature is optional and in the control of creators) I can't make a definitive statement here, however I'm sure they are doing this by design to have an impact on Creators, Consumers, and Advertisers.
Here's one speculative scenario. Placing an ad right at the most-replayed timestamp or after can create revenue. However users get smart eventually and learn to trick a system that can trick them, making the feature's purpose and product design ethics questionable. Here is a fundamental question in this context. What is YT's strategy for creators? Is this a way to lower creator payments by design. Or is this encouraging creators to spread key points in a video to increase overall video length and generate more ad revenue? I'm curious to know.
Likewise, when you add a new feature, do this only after making a comprehensive assessment of its impact on various user groups of your product. Avoid the negative domino effect on your business. Ask if this is inline with your overall UX strategy and product vision.
3) Impact on Advertisers
We just spoke about the impact on creators. Now, it's a no-brainer that Advertisers are impacted as well. People can skip ads (unless you're in premium) and skip to most-replayed, which reduces watch time, canvas and context for advertisers. Again, this is another fundamental question. Anything and everything we do impacts several user groups and this is a practical approach I would recommend to all product management and product design professionals.
User Experience is an outcome of multi-dimensional thinking.
4) Impact on Society
I'm guessing, we might see more restlessness and anxiety and the need to cut to the chase when consuming other forms of digital video content like learning, meetings, infotainment and other content which requires complete audience attention throughout the video and not just its summary or highlights. When a product like YouTube takes centre-stage in how a society creates, learns and functions, it obviously can make a deep and wide irreversible impact on our digital behaviour evolution and future. (Like how Twitter as taught us to keep it short)
Here is biggest downside: Media manipulation
Consider this scenario. If you want to peddle lies, which is the foundation of most peer-peer media and even mass media, all they need to leverage is the "most replayed" feature and boom, you enable mass hysteria through manipulated social learning. Media can present a vested version of truth to a desired audience and actively push viewers to focus on a specific point and manipulate user perception.
As product designers, are we designing the product or is the product designing us?
Who is designing?
Who is shaping the future?
As product designers, we have a responsibility. The question is are you thinking and asking deep questions with respect to your product, its impact on users and society? Think beyond screens, think ecosystems, and think about the impact of your design on our collective future.
Originally published on LinkedIn on October 17, 2023