Youtube timestamp sharing feature — UX Case study
Let’s say, you are watching a funny Youtube video. It’s 30 mins long and you think the scene at 05:45 is very funny. So, you wanna share that with your friends. But when you share the link, it starts the video from 0:00. Now, he/she has to manually go to the timeframe and watch that scene.
That’s just too much friction and bad UX. Ofcourse, there are ways to counter it. For example, You can modify the link before sending it to your friend, by adding ?t=Xs at the end of the link. Where X is the seconds at that point. For example t=300s means 5 minute mark.
But again, that’s just a work around. a simple Javascript can do it very easily. Keeping this problem in mind, I have worked on this micro UX project as a way to test my problem solving skills.
OBJECTIVE
To introduce/add a feature to Youtube mobile app that allows users to share a video at a specific time frame. So that the friends can simply start watching from the best part instead of wasting time on waiting for that part ot come up.
EXPLORATION
I looked up on Youtube website on desktop, and guess what, there is an option to attach the timestamp with the video sharing link. That means the design was already there, it’s just had to be implemented on mobile as well. So, I took that as a starting point.
I knew it wasn’t that big of a task but I still wanted to make the best out of it. I looked up Material Design Components and got their official checkbox component from there.
Next thing was to decide the placement and copy.
Placement
- below the section title
- to the right of section title
Copy -
- Start at 04:53 (Same as desktop but customizable, do we need customization)
- attach timestamp (simple but more technical jargon)
To keep consistency with the existing design system and copy of Youtube, I decided to place the checkbox functionality to the right of the section title and labelled it same as it is on Youtube Desktop — Start at [time]
DESIGNS
CONCLUSION
There is a high possibility that Youtube already had this issue noticed and some research analysis might have resulted it to not be implemented. So, please take this article just as a curious act to solve the problem I am facing myself with the app.
As UX designers, we should be looking for answers when faced a problem rather than whine about it.
Thanks for your time. i hope this added value in your life. If it did, please give claps to this post and share it with your problem-solving friends.
PS: Try holding the clap button to give more claps.
