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YouTube Finally Embraces Google's Material Design, Puts Focus On Content (googleblog.com)

Posted by msmash on from the for-better-or-worse dept.

Google's Material Design specs are finally coming to the YouTube desktop site, the company said on Tuesday. The feature isn't rolling out to all just yet, but you can test drive it here. My initial impressions after playing with the new design: lots and lots of white space, but the optional dark theme looks pretty. Here's how the company describes the changes: The key principles of this new design are:
1. Simplicity: The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love. The new design is clean and fresh, thanks to the removal of visuals that can distract from your browsing or watching experience. We're focused on making the content shine!
2. Consistency: The new design is aligned across Google platforms, including the YouTube mobile app, while still providing the features you know and love.
3. Beauty: We strive to combine beauty and purpose to create an effortless experience.

6 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Make a system any fool can use... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    and only a fool will want to use it.

    1. Re:Make a system any fool can use... by Known+Nutter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People will complain about anything. It's a site to share and watch video content, not design your apartment around.

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    2. Re: Make a system any fool can use... by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Given that the trend in the last 5-10 years has been to discard usability in favour of wannabe hipster wank (examples: Just about any UI ever in that time period that's had a "refresh" or something similar, Win10 probably being the poster child but there are endless other examples), I'm not holding out much hope for what a "UI refresh" will do to Youtube.

  2. Infinite scroll... Meh... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I was never a fan of the infinite content scroll. It works well for Pinterest. But not so much for other content websites.

  3. Innovate into obscurity by xession · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Youtube has pretty much been on a downward trend in UI usability since Google purchased the site. Every time they decide to "update" the interface, it seems to keep on steam rolling back in time. This "content focused" approach has left little presented up front, forcing users to go through menus to find the other shit the site can do. 2006 Youtube might look dated, but usability was much better overall, as was stability as I recall. With this latest iteration, this leaves me feeling like I'm using Windows 2.0, next will probably move us back to Windows 1.0 like functionality and I can't wait until everything is done from a terminal, including watching the video in hex!

    Damn good times ahead folks!

  4. Re:Usability by Gavagai80 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Used to be websites had good desktop/laptop usability and poor phone/tablet usability. Now they have good phone/tablet usability and poor desktop/laptop usability.

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