It's Official: The New You Tube Design Sucks

Recently, You Tube unveiled a new controversial design for its video page. This isn't the first time that You Tube's tweaked its pages with some controversy; every so often it rolls out new features that cause some backlash, usually from a small group of disgruntled folks who can't handle any change, no matter how minute. However, this is the first time I can safely say that the latest backlash is richly deserved.

Why? Well, I'll be brutally honest-- the new design sucks, and it sucks monkey butt. It's the type of mind-numbingly bad design that literally has you screaming, "What were they thinking!? And what cocktail of prescription medication and booze were they on when they thought it up!?"

Of course I can't just express my dislike for the new design by saying it sucks monkey butt or suggesting that only a boozed up, drug addled coke fiend probably imagined it; I have to be a little more sophisticated than that. So below I'll give a more well-reasoned response as to why this latest change at You Tube is positively the worst thing that could've been implemented:

It's Altered Its Brand Too Much
One of the things that made You Tube "You Tube" is that it had features that distinguished it from other sites. One of its most distinctive features was its 5 star rating system, which enabled viewers to not only rate their favorite videos but use it as a way of gauging which out of the millions of videos available were worth watching.

For some bizarre reason, You Tube decided to drop this feature in favor of a "Digg-like" system where people can vote thumbs up or thumbs down on a video with the choices, "I Like It/ I Dislike It". This change is akin to Amazon.com getting rid of its well known yellow star ratings system and replacing it with one happy and one unhappy smiley. It's just dumb, dumb dumb, because this system has been an integral part of You Tube, so why change it at all?

Another example of You Tube altering its brand in order to be more like other sites is its tweaking of the comments section-- again. Last year or so, You Tube started converting its comments section to a more Metacafe-style system in which comments get scores based on how many thumbs up or downs they get. With the latest tweaking, the score is highlighted in a different color (green), making You Tube's lifting of Metacafe's comments section complete.

Why on earth would You Tube, the innovator that laid the groundwork for other sites, start copying their way of doing things? It's anyone's guess, but for whatever reason, Google's insistence on trying to make You Tube more like other sites and less like itself is baffling; it's almost as if it's suffering from an inferiority complex or something!

Terrible Usability
The new design is a joke in terms of usability; it makes the Superbad website look downright comprehensible. In the sidebar on certain pages, there's a list of videos with no title telling you what they are-- whether they're featured videos, suggested videos, or other videos from the user whose content you're watching.

Videos can be stopped and played by just clicking on them, which is redundant because there's already a navigation of buttons below them that do the same thing. Adding this feature doesn't make sense anyway, because being You Tube, it's not obvious it's there until you actually click on the video! How many people, who are used to years of You Tube's videos not being clickable, will actually do that and discover this new feature in the process? Not very many, I think!

Other problems: the feature that enables you to attach a video response is all but hidden-- you have to post a comment on a video first, in order to get the link that will allow you to post a video response. Absolutely stupid change, because as with the issue of clicking on a video to pause and start it, it's hidden; you have to access it through a method that isn't at all obvious.

The last major example of poor usability: now that videos no longer have a star rating attached to them, there's no way of knowing beforehand which videos are good and which are bad. That's because you have to actually vote on a video now to see how many "liked it" votes it's gotten.

In the words of the Church Lady, "Now isn't that special?"

Removal of Ratings System Has Taken the Fun Out of Uploading
One of the reasons why You Tube was popular was that it allowed people to get ratings for their videos, which gave them a sense of pride, a feeling of accomplishment and a feeling of appreciation for their work. So they worked hard to put out content that would get the best ratings and most positive responses possible. Now those very same people who'd earned 4 and 5 stars for their videos over the years have had their ratings pretty much erased. So not only have they lost everything they've worked hard for, they have to go back to square one to get new high ratings and feedback under the current thumbs up/ thumbs down system.

Worse yet, the new system couldn't be a worse replacement for the old one. There's nothing satisfying about learning that 45 out of 12 people liked your video, as opposed to seeing that out of the 20, 000 views you received, the majority gave you between 4 and 5 stars. That's because in the former, you're only just getting an opinion of what people think, but in the latter, you're getting rewarded with something of value (in this case, nice ratings). So by adding this new rating system, You Tube's pretty much ruined two major motivations in making and uploading videos-- the gratification of earning high ratings and the sense of accomplishment one receives when getting them.

Crap Readability and Design
The biggest issue with the new You Tube design is its readability and overall look. In their infinite wisdom, the geniuses at Google have redesigned the video pages with virtually no variation in font, either in font family or formatting. So text is uniform throughout-- no bolded or italicized fonts, different font families, or contrasting sizes or colors to help separate one section from the other. To add insult to injury, the font is all in 9pt Arial, one of the worst ones you could have against a white background.

The uniform text would be bearable if there were at least page elements to make the video page easier to read. But bizarrely enough, there are no rules, colored content boxes, or anything like that to help distinguish one section from another.

As a result of all this, the new You Tube design not only looks bland and unfinished, it's a lot harder to read. I'm 37 and can barely pick out anything on the video pages because it all blends together like a grey mesh; imagine how much harder it must be for the middle-aged, elderly, or anyone with poor eyesight in general.

What's Going On, Google?
Google has made a lot of egregious mistakes and controversial decisions with its products lately, but this latest one takes the cake. If it were any other site that rolled out a design like this, this error would've been forgivable and even understandable. But for a major corporation like Google that practically redefined web design and usability, this is beyond excusable!

What on earth is going on at HQ, that someone would've green-lighted such a hideous design that's offensive on all fronts and kills what users liked the most about this site? I don't know, but one thing is certain: if Google expects You Tube's fanbase to roll over and play dead, it has another thing coming. You Tube may have a large, loyal following going back to since it began, but every fan has his limit and You Tubers, already fed up with the countless recent changes recently, are very close to reaching theirs. If Google has any common sense, it will bring back the old layout and systems rating. If it doesn't, it shouldn't be surprised if You Tubers start jumping ship-- the last thing that Google wants for a site that's fastly turning into a money pit.