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YouTube Finally Embraces Google's Material Design, Puts Focus On Content (googleblog.com)
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.
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.
and only a fool will want to use it.
Well, simplicity I'll grant, and maybe consistency.
But a clean miss on beauty. Flat is ugly. Always has been. Always will be. No matter what's "trendy."
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Is it really supposed to disappear and move the whole content to the right when the mouse hovers over the sidebar? Or is it not targeted at mouse users?
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
The best part about this new design is the dark theme, I hope other sites follow, because some sites ( /. included) it's like staring at a light bulb.
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.
"Test drive" implies it's temporary. How do I get decent Youtube back? The "test drive" link is http://youtube.com/new?optin=t... but https://www.youtube.com/new?op... doesn't reverse it.
The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love.
We have entered the era of the glorification of the consumer. All you should do is consume, and feel happy about it.
Not because they care about you. Because the consumer can be monetized.
Irresponsible disclosure is responsible
Usability? That's so 1990s.. Now it's all about aesthetics... ugly ass aesthetics.
I was never a fan of the infinite content scroll. It works well for Pinterest. But not so much for other content websites.
So... do we get to see a video's rating in the search/related results like it used to be? Because removing that feature was one of the dumbest moves I've ever seen.
Example: If you tend to wander around in the *science* areas of youtube, having ratings visible is the easiest way to avoid entering the loony 'free-energy' areas.
Got this for about 2 hours yesterday while I was editing some video and two things immediately struck me:
(This is all running Firefox with no-plugins on a Core i7 with 16 GB of memory)
1. Almost all the UI elements lagged, my suspicion is that content is loaded as needed. The comments section has been loading on demand for a while but now it seems to extend to other functions too now
2. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I beheld none; smaller lighter fonts, less contrast, burying things under modal dialogs (seriously why is a popup necessary for sharing the URL?)
Speaking of modal dialogs some of the notifications now appear under the video layer (making it impossible to interact with)
Google has a habit of testing crap like this on a subset of us and waiting for annoyed responses to fill up the Google Product Forums, I haven't checked to see what's there today but my guess is other users experienced similar behavior (unless I just got lucky in which case "go me")
crazy dynamite monkey
More white space
= less words
= less content
= less thinking
= more scrolling until you actually find what you want.
I suppose Youtube's most profitable customers are unable to deal with a screen packed full of information, but I'd prefer not to waste my time scrolling until I find what I need.
2 years ago it was skeuomorphic now it is material design. 2 years from now it will be something else.
The packaging changes a little and the older front end devs get force retired.
How is this an improvement for anyone? It's just seems like a hamster wheel.
Am I the only one who thinks Usability should be a key design principle?
No, you aren't. They've ignored it here, and they screwed it up even worse in the similar Google Voice redesign. Addition of unnecessary whitespace inevitably means the user has to do more work to get the same (useful) information. Google Voice redesign decreased usability -- for no apparent reason -- in other ways as well, but that's probably off-topic here.
I hate what they did with Android 7.
Icons with rounded corners (mkay, I can kinda disable it), but why, dear google, isn't it EASIER to quickly recognize icons when they have different shape?
The quick access bar has become barely readable with tiny icons drawn with thin line.
Oh, and I don't like the circle icons of "material" thing at all either.
Oh, and I seem to like the touchwiz by the known company.
Samsung should be paying me, I guess.
Way less bullshit, 100% better. I already forget what the old one looked like.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
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!
Will this simple clean design remove the pop-in videos that show up towards the end of a video, and don't seem to be removable? Because those are so distracting they render the videos unwatchable.
All I see is a page with a vertically scrolling frame on the left and window that's too wide on the right so the content is cropped on both sides. Are asshole designers just assuming everyone has a widescreen monitor?
FUCK. YOU.
#DeleteFacebook
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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The entire UI can be playing a video, done. The comments are going to be total trash anyways.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Simple, consistent, beautiful.... does that mean no ads?
I can't decide if this post is interesting, funny, insightful, or flamebait.
Or, they didn't ignore it and what they came up with through user testing just happens to not be something you personally like....
or you know, your preferences are law and fact I guess that could be it too.
I don't like it!
Therefore no one likes it!
Therefore they should have spent time doing something completely unrelated that those same people would have no idea how to implement!
It appears to me that few people within Google have ever had to use their phones within a crowded theater. The material UI is too bright, and attracts too much attention.
A mobile UI must consider unobtrusiveness and subtlety. Material design is not so hot.
What would be the point in "dissing on" something that's finished? By then it's too late to change it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Using Palemoon here and all I see when I go to the new url is a page advertising Google Chrome and saying my browser isn't supported. Apparently I'm not allowed to even see the new youtube site, which suits me fine. Google Voice's material design makeover turned it into a steaming pile that's ridiculously slow and javascript heavy. Sigh. Good thing I never actually use the youtube web site. I do all my youtube viewing through mpv or youtube-dl. Such a better experience!
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
I did that two weeks ago for the dark mode UI. I went to the opt-in link just now, and got "you're already seeing the new experience".
FC Closer
They seem to be changing the UI every 2 weeks it seems like. Every time I go to YouTube, the location of the "add to Watch Later" button has changed. In less than one year it went from the top right corner to the bottom left corner, then to the bottom right corner, for about a week it was moved to a separate dropdown, then back to the bottom right corner but now you had to hover over it, now it's moved to the top right corner. Pretty much every button I use has to be hunted down again on every visit.
Come up with a UI design that doesn't suck and stick to it. Changing it for the sake of change is disruptive. I'd hope you have UI designers in your team.
Also, 5MB of JavaScript and HTML (not counting the preview images or Ajax calls and with AdBlock enabled) before you even render a single page is a bit excessive. That's 5MB of "framework" before you even load data.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Or, they didn't ignore it and what they came up with through user testing just happens to not be something you personally like.... or you know, your preferences are law and fact I guess that could be it too.
Oh, it is certainly possible that they found users who felt the new design was more aesthetically pleasing, and felt that that was more important than usability.
Material Design is flat, boxy, and cold without providing clear delineations of areas in the UI. It is just a fad that will be shunned a few months from now when someone comes up with the next "best" thing.
The look and function is great. Nice and clean. Google gets full marks for this.
However, I really don't like the infinite page length. It just keeps scrolling and scrolling, and scrolling, and...
Avatar of the God(s) Random
and certainly possible that they found more users who felt it was more usable even though it's not what you want.
but no, keep doubling down on the whole "Well I don't like it, therefore no one likes it!"
Source: I've done a lot of user testing, and in fact, the whole point of User Testing is that just because a developer/designer/product owner feels X is the best way of doing things, that may not be how the audience in general feels.
Material design is not a flat UI in that it uses plenty of hints of depth, including overlapping objects, shadows, and gradients. It's also not necessarily minimalist, though it can be. An example of minimalism would be www.google.com. Youtube doesn't seem to embrace that concept that much, on the other hand, as any one screen seems to be filled with graphics and other objects.
Flat UI, on the other hand, is the crap that Microsoft does, and in order to distinguish UI objects in a flat UI, you have to use deeply contrasting colors, contributing to the fisher-price look.