After the changes in Gmail a few days ago, I noticed a similar ad hoc behavior with YouTube today. And I meant ad hoc as in while I was using the website it was still using the old interface, and then after I clicked on a few pages, the layout changed instantly.
Witnessing an interface change before your eyes
The change is pretty evident – videos are now shown in wide-screen format and are noticably larger than before. It’s confirmed on the YouTube blog, and it may be that they are slowly rolling it out to certain people at a time since I only noticed the change a few minutes ago. I recall someone saying that Gmail themes had a same effect – some people noticed the new themes feature while others didn’t, and it was because Google was rolling them out to users in phases (presumably).
A more ‘immersive’ YouTube?
I actually like the wide-screen format and the larger view, because the videos do look and feel bigger. Despite its popularity and ubiquity, YouTube’s overall experience isn’t all that ‘immersive’ (Vimeo comes to mind). I think with the new format, it’s a step closer in that direction.
Judging from the comments from the blog post, not all users are happy with it, though. Some users prefer the screen to adapt to the original video size – which means some pages may look different than others. It’s important to note that YouTube doesn’t stretch uploaded videos, but pads the borders with black. This means that the majority of videos that use the 4:3 format will have black rectangles on the left and right.
Interestingly, though – the thumbnails are cropped to fit the whole area. So 4:3 videos will have the top and bottom parts clipped in the thumbnail (which sort of makes sense, since keeping the black rectangles might make it look ugly).
The clipping thing wasn’t very obvious to me as I was in the middle of trying to look for cooking videos. If my goal ultimately is to watch videos, a larger view of the video gives me more of what I want. I could care less about videos being cropped or ratios, unless it negatively impacted my viewing.
Introducing interface changes as a usability topic
This brings me back to the usability aspect of websites – this kind of change is a fairly straightforward one. Not much else has changed, but even then – having a wider, larger player has a dramatic impact on the way users experience the site.
Also, I don’t know if there were any formal studies done on the design of the new layout and screen. It almost seems as if this was a simple case of understanding what users want and trying to give users the kind of experience they prefer.
And often times, this is the case with websites, especially ones with any element of social networking. Users grow with the site. As initial users, who were novices at first, turn into regular/intermediate users – their goals also ‘evolve’. And thus, the site has to adapt to the changing needs of the community.
This is particularly difficult for any site that needs to appeal to a wide spectrum of users. Recent interfaces changes in Flickr (video in Flickr) and Facebook (major facelift) drew a lot of criticism as much as it did praise.
Who’s responsible?
Does this fall under the responsibility of interaction designers and usability practitioners, whose goal is to place users before all things, to address the often conflicting reactions of real users when faced with upgraded layouts and new features?
It would be interesting to see find out how the industry deals with this sort of ‘user politics’ when it comes to the increasingly ubiquitous use of technology.