MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Hello.
JOSH SASSOON: Hi.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Oh, hi.
Today we are talking about YouTube and design.
YouTube's grown tremendously over the last nine years
and now has a global community of users.
And that is a really interesting design problem.
JOSH SASSOON: I mean, if you're going to have a problem, that's
a good kind of problem to have, right?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Oh.
Yes.
But it presents a challenge.
And that challenge is, how do you
design a product that looks and feels consistent
when it means something different to everyone
who uses it?
Most brands have a pretty clear idea
of how they want to be represented.
But at YouTube, our challenge is that YouTube represents
everything from delightful and silly content
to serious and sensitive stuff.
JOSH SASSOON: That sounds like a pretty crazy challenge.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Exactly.
Exactly.
JOSH SASSOON: So why don't we share
the story of how we took on that challenge
and captured YouTube's brand.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
Sounds good to me.
Everybody, this is Josh and he's a product designer at YouTube.
JOSH SASSOON: Hi.
And this is Michael.
He's a marketing designer.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
We work together on YouTube's User Experience Team.
And, Josh, let's tell these folks
what they can expect in this video.
JOSH SASSOON: Sounds like a good plan.
So in the next few minutes we're going to cover a few things.
The first is how a traditional style guide can actually
be something much, much more than a style guide.
The second is understanding your brand's identity
through its community of users.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: And then we can wrap up
with some tips and tricks for how
you can use this in your own work.
JOSH SASSOON: Cool.
So we represent a collaboration between UX design
and marketing.
And we actually started building a traditional style guide.
And then we decided that we needed
to do something different.
And we ended up with something much,
much more useful to our team.
So here is just one page from what
the style guide looks like.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Right.
The guide we created lets teams at YouTube jam
together on product design and content
creation by speaking a common language.
We can't go through the entire resource in this video,
but we're going to share some of the content and process that
went into turning YouTube style guide into a thought guide.
JOSH SASSOON: A thought guide?
What's a thought guide?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Well, what do
you think I'm thinking right now?
JOSH SASSOON: What are you thinking right now?
I think you're thinking that when YouTube first started,
it was a video dating site.
Am I right?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
You are right.
And that blows my mind every time.
I love it.
Good job.
JOSH SASSOON: So since then the site
has evolved into an entire service-- a huge service.
And the video content on the service has grown up, too.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: YouTube is a platform
for community movements, like It Gets Better Project, memes--
like the Harlem Shake-- and serious subjects--
like political uprisings captured on mobile phones.
JOSH SASSOON: And obviously YouTube gets all of its content
from its users.
So that means that our users are designing our product with us.
So why wouldn't a style guide actually reflect that?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Exactly what I was thinking.
So we think it's way cooler to design with our community
than for our community.
I mean, not that we're not designing for our users.
We are.
But I mean with them.
We feel like family-- like the Brady Bunch.
JOSH SASSOON: But that presents a second question, doesn't it?
Who makes up YouTube's community?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Well, you might
think it's just people watching videos.
But it's more complex than that.
JOSH SASSOON: So complex, actually,
that we spent about a year doing research
with users to learn how they interact with
and relate to YouTube's brand.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
Here's some of that research.
Here is a page from a diary study.
And that looks like somebody using their tablet
on the toilet.
Is that accurate?
JOSH SASSOON: I'm afraid it is.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Well, that's fantastic.
Because we can use that.
We like data.
Sometimes research and analytics are
used to solve a really specific problem,
like how to improve task completion
or click-through rates.
JOSH SASSOON: But we're actually curious
about larger communities and their needs on our platform.
Not just a specific persona.
And not just the people that are watching videos.
So going back to that question, who
really is everyone on YouTube?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Right.
The YouTube community is really complex and diverse.
There's a lot of people viewing videos.
But that's not everyone.
There's also people making really interesting content,
creating original videos, vlogs, shows, music.
All of that stuff.
JOSH SASSOON: Yeah, and actually another thing
that we found interesting is that advertisers were uploading
amazing content and collaborating with our creators
to make commercials and ads that people really love to watch
and actually wanted to share.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Right.
So the research and digging into experiments, data,
and YouTube's history revealed that there's
real tribes of people collaborating on the platform.
And that information is so much more interesting and valuable
than it is for us to invent personas
or to design for just one kind of user.
JOSH SASSOON: Yeah.
So a style guide is usually there
to document a brand in one direction.
It's like a photo from one perspective.
And we wanted something a little bit more dynamic.
Something that was more like a mirror
that reflected principles back on the community.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Right.
So if we had a mirror like that we
could use it to determine the success of our design solutions
or campaign creative.
The new metric being authenticity.
JOSH SASSOON: And it was that idea
that started to turn our style guide into more of a thought
guide.
And it began by curating words that described our brand that
would reflect the personality of YouTube's tribes.
And then it actually guided product design.
And it also helped craft marketing efforts.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
The words.
The words--
JOSH SASSOON: The words.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: --are connected.
Human, spirit, and simple.
JOSH SASSOON: Awesome.
Words!
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Woo-hoo!
JOSH SASSOON: Words!
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Words.
JOSH SASSOON: So we have these words.
What we do with these words?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Right.
Right.
OK.
So words are good.
Words are good.
They're well-meaning words, but we need actionable principles
that we can actually work with.
So let's take connected as an example.
We've identified our tribes-- creators, advertisers, viewers.
And individually-- unconnected-- they're
just floating out there in space like little stars.
But say we do something.
We create a product or an experience.
And we try to solve two of their needs and connect those groups.
Well, that's great because now we've got a line.
And that's good.
But you still got one floating out there.
JOSH SASSOON: But what if we actually connected all three
and we made a consolation which conveniently
looks like a play button?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Gorgeous.
JOSH SASSOON: Whenever you have three points connecting
your community together you can actually
triangulate your position.
You know where you are.
You know who you are.
And you know where you're going to go next.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
Exactly.
And chances are if you've done all those
and you've connected them, you're
probably making work that meets the needs of more user tribes.
And that's a good thing.
So we shifted the way that we evaluate our work
by adding the metric of connectedness, too.
So we aim for beautiful constellations, not just
solutions that serve one group.
The more the merrier.
JOSH SASSOON: Yeah.
And I think if we look back this principle is actually
happening already on YouTube.
We had lots of advertisers that were already
working with creators to create great commercials
and ads for users.
So a lot of this was already happening.
And all we did on our end was we started observing this.
And then we assembled a team of designers
from product and marketing all together.
And we started to think about the brand voice end
to end on YouTube and came up with those words.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
And those words-- again, connected, human, spirited,
simple-- they became principles that
helped us create a common language.
That was a real thing that evolved.
A common language for product and marketing
to collaborate together.
So let's look at some of the ways we
work to deliver on those attributes and principles.
What comes to mind is the YouTube Music Awards.
That's a way that we ran with the idea of connected.
So we streamed a live event from Seoul, Moscow, London, Rio, New
York, so that the entire world could celebrate
music on YouTube at the same time.
JOSH SASSOON: Very cool.
And, actually, on the product side,
I think I have a good example of connected.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Oh.
All right.
Let me hear it.
JOSH SASSOON: So we discovered that creators really
wanted to connect more with their viewers.
And we built this tool that lets those creators see
who their top fans are.
And now they can actually reach out
to their most engaged subscribers
and start a conversation with them or just say thanks.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: I love that.
Humans connecting with other humans.
JOSH SASSOON: Yeah.
Speaking of human--
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Speaking of human-- let's talk
about LGBT creators on YouTube who made it a safe space
to come out and speak their minds.
We thought that was so awesome that we wanted
to make a video celebrating their work and those moments.
So we did.
And then we asked people in that video to upload their own
and join in using the hashtag proud to love.
And they did.
It was an awesome response and so
nice to connect with the community in that way.
JOSH SASSOON: And now there's Proud to Play, right?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes, there's Proud to Play, too.
You can search for that video on YouTube.
It's lovely.
JOSH SASSOON: Cool.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: You know what?
Tell them about that secret Harlem Shake Easter egg
because that is a good example of spirited, I think.
JOSH SASSOON: Yeah.
It's very spirited.
So if you go to YouTube and you type in "do the Harlem shake"
into the search field, the site actually does the Harlem Shake.
It's pretty cool.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: I love that.
So this is the still image.
You really have to go to the site
to try it and see it for yourself.
It's awesome.
But we wanted to express our spirit just
like the original creators of the Harlem Shake
and everybody who joined in with them.
JOSH SASSOON: Cool.
So we also want YouTube to feel simple and easy to use.
It's one of our biggest ongoing efforts.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yup, that is true.
And it's one of the hardest.
One of the ways we tried to solve that was with an app
called YouTube Capture.
And it made it a lot simpler to upload videos
to YouTube from your iPhone.
JOSH SASSOON: I think the original flow
took almost a dozen steps.
And we were able to reduce it down to just two steps
and also include editing and enhancement capabilities.
That's pretty simple.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Love that.
Amazing.
So I think when we look back at all these things,
one of the things we learned was that no matter what we're
doing-- whether it's an app or campaign creative-- we can find
ways to embody the brand attributes in our work.
JOSH SASSOON: And depending on the specific user
tribe or the context, we can dial those attributes
up or down.
So they're really flexible.
And I think now's a good time that we
show a chart so this presentation actually
feels official.
You have to have a chart.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes, that would make this very official.
All right.
I think we've got a chart.
And it's called "Find the Right Balance".
Here it is.
JOSH SASSOON: So for a product feature,
we look for solutions that feel connected and simple
predominately.
And that's the blue and the purple on this chart.
And then we throw in a dash of spirited and human.
We always have all four attributes present.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yes.
So take the marketing campaign.
All four are present again.
But we want a super sized helping of spirited and human.
That's the yellow and the red pieces of the pie.
And then connected and simple are there,
but they might be side dishes, but they're still at the table.
JOSH SASSOON: Right.
So these are actionable brand principles.
That's awesome.
Now what do you think we should do next?
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: I think we should wrap this video up
with a bulleted list of takeaways.
JOSH SASSOON: Oh my gosh.
You read my mind.
I love bulleted lists.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Mind reading.
JOSH SASSOON: The best way to wrap up a presentation.
So when you're designing your own thought guide,
here's some things that we learned
that we wanted to share with you.
The first thing is it's hard to make
good decisions with incomplete date
or just one kind of persona.
So if you can research real users,
and especially think about entire tribes of users,
dig into that and identify your community.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Nice.
Love that.
All right.
So once you've got your community identified--
those people are full of passion and personality.
So why not look to them to help define
your product and your brand.
JOSH SASSOON: And next if you've identified your community it's
way way, way more fun to design with them instead of just
for them.
So engage with the tribes on your platform
as often as you can.
Talk to your users and communities.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: OK.
Love that.
And when it comes to brand attributes,
I've got a tip for you.
Are you ready?
JOSH SASSOON: Yes.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: OK.
So it's flex and fit.
So choose words that are flexible in their definition
yet specific enough to actually work and be useful.
And then once you get them, you can dial them up or dial them
down depending on the context of your project or your work
or the problem you're trying to solve.
JOSH SASSOON: Cool.
And last but not least, think principles before pixels.
Stay true to your community by turning those brand
attributes into actionable principles
that you measure all of your design work against.
A thought guide can actually help any size company--
large or small-- with any type of community
make better decisions.
It's been a huge change for us in how we design and work.
MICHAEL AUSTIN SUI: Yeah.
Definitely.
So thank you guys for watching.
Thank you for your time.
Check out some of the videos we went over
and shared today on youtube.com.
That's the website.
And we hope you have a great, great I/O.