04 / GAMES AND COMMUNITY
YouTube Gaming UX
Mission
Innovate on ways to deepen gamers’ relationships with their favorite games and discover the best gaming content.
I led UX for YouTube Gaming, designing for gaming publishers and 200M daily viewers, on a surface of 50B yearly watch hours.
I designed the end-to-end flows and scalable systems for account linking, launching integrations with Epic, Riot, and PUBG (5M+ accounts linked).
I initiated foundational research of gaming user journeys, championed transparency and control for gaming recommendations, and drove it into team strategy and metrics.
Messages
A preamble.
I was a builder since my first day at YouTube.
I launched Messages on Web by writing a JavaScript bookmarklet that allowed testers to preview the live experience of receiving a message on the real YouTube.com.
This allowed us to derisk our launch and introduce a new experience while making sure video remained king.
The prototypes led to the launch candidate.
We captured millions of weekly video shares, and a significant lift in DAU.
I also pushed a few CLs (PR equivalents)!
Rewards
Making YouTube an interactive gaming platform.
I designed the Account Linking and Rewards system, which allowed gamers to connect their gaming accounts (Epic, Riot, Supercell and more) to YouTube.
The experience I created allowed users to earn in-game items by watching videos, bringing their favorite games with them off-platform.
The flow end to end: consent, the in-game reward on the watch page, and confirmation
Impact
Gaming discovery
Using game data to improve video recommendations, with privacy and control.
In this project, I pushed for upholding user trust at YouTube, by championing an experience with transparency and control for 3rd party data recommendations.
User opportunity
I initiated foundational research of Gaming User Journeys. We found that recommendations that understood which games users played were important to help them get better at these games.
Gaming's most-requested feature was recommendations that understood what you actually play, not only what you watch.
Don’t know game
- I want to discover a game I haven’t heard about
Want to play game
- I want to learn more about a game I just heard about
Plays the game
- I want to find out how to achieve X
- I want to get better at the game
- I want to keep up with the latest game news
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+3 more Show less
- I want to watch skilled gameplay
- I want to watch fun gameplay / highlights
- I want to watch videos about the game culture
Deep into game
- I want to be immersed in the game’s community
- I want to watch my favourite creators
User risk
The signals existed in linked accounts and Google Play Games, but most people do not know YouTube is part of Google, so I advocated for data transparency.
A wireframe of a YouTube video recommendation. Where the reason for the recommendation would sit, a caption in Comic Sans lists every signal that produced it — Play Games, watch history, time of day, the age and gender on the Google Account, and whether they like pineapple pizza — running on longer than the video's own title. Beside it, a cartoon face reacts in alarm.
TradeoffThe safe option was to disclose everything, everywhere. I argued instead for transparency proportional to surprise: heightened explanation only when a recommendation comes from somewhere other than YouTube itself.
We'd word it "Based on your game progress" so we were both honest and helpful at the same time.
Progressive disclosure system
I proposed a framework consisting of three components: Below-thumbnail badging, Info Dialog, and Control Settings. It served as a blueprint for how YouTube handles 1P and 3P data disclosures across product verticals.
I rigorously tested the experience in two user studies, and authored the post-launch monitoring feedback mechanisms.
ImpactOur derisked launch led to a significant lift in Gaming Watch Time and DAUs.
Reflections
It was exhilarating to bring innovation to YouTube through games.
Four years at YouTube taught me that when you design for 200 million daily viewers, the smallest design decisions have massive ripples.
What I'm proudest of wasn't just shipping to millions, it was standing up for user trust.
And let's be real, I got to work on my favorite thing ever - GAMING! I will not forget our memes and gaming nights.
Plz look at my doggos of YouTube collection. Just because.
Kind words
She took the initiative to tackle this complex issue not just for Gaming, but for all YT recs. Xinni's proposal to increase transparency and control for these signals will make it easier for teams across YouTube to use these signals in a privacy safe way.
An amazing job at fostering a great relationship between UX and Eng. Her clear plan for keeping communication open and productive makes me feel incredibly optimistic for the future of the gaming team.
Xinni has to be one of the kindest, most empathetic people at Google. Her creative, research-rooted design work has always been principled, and her style of critiquing work has truly helped hone my own skills.
We are really lucky to have you on the team and couldn't have wished for a better UX partner on the YouTube side. Your continuous support in providing valuable feedback on the existing critical user journeys, as well as all the work you are doing on [project], has gotten all of us really excited about what's next.
Wanted to say thank you, Xinni, for so thoroughly and clearly preparing assets for the Account Linking study. From organizing flows in the prototype through separate entry points for each user journey, and preparing a thorough research prep document with goals organized by screen and interaction, you really made this a super smooth collaboration between research and design.
Thanks Xinni for putting together a framework and system for us to brainstorm features on the fly for the gaming team to work on for this quarter!
Thank you for presenting to my group's all-hands! The engineers got a lot of value from your insights about UX-eng collaboration.
Impressed how quickly you ramped up on Stadia and already making a difference!
It was easy to just walk by, but they chose to chase this issue — which should not only result in a more polished UX because of fewer i18n bugs, but make life better for our users by making YouTube feel more 'native.' Stay awesome, y'alls.
Thank you so much for your part in launching Covid emoji! Really impressed by how quickly the whole virtual team pulled together this creative solution to help the world! Feeling very grateful and inspired to work with you. 🤜🤛
GGWP!