Provide a way for users to save and organize YouTube Shorts into playlists.
The Challenge
YouTube Shorts lacks a way for users to save and organize short-form videos into playlists.
With the rise in popularity of short-form video content, YouTube has been encouraging creators to produce more YouTube Shorts by introducing new monetization incentives. However, many users have expressed frustration over a missing core feature of saving a short-form video into a playlist.
Final Solution
Saving a short to a playlist
Users can save a Short by tapping the bookmark icon on the side bar.
After saving, they have the option to apply custom or suggested tags. Tags act as filters, allowing users to quickly find saved Shorts when they want to rewatch it.
If users prefer to not use tags, they can simply save the Short into a playlist.
Finding a saved short
Users can navigate to the Playlists page to access their saved Shorts.
After selecting a playlist, they can view all Shorts that were added to it.
To quickly locate specific content, users can filter by tags they previously applied.
Research
To gain insights about individuals' short-form video consumption habits, I conducted online surveys and interviews that included users from various platforms, not just YouTube Shorts. This broader approach allowed me to understand how users interact with save features across different ecosystems.
TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram were the preferred platform to view short-form media from most to least popular, respectively.
Likelihood to save a video
TikTok and Instagram users were more likely to save a video to a playlist than YouTube users.
YouTube users are less inclined to save videos likely due to the platform’s lack of saving functionality.
Likelihood to rewatch a saved video
Many users did not express a strong desire to rewatch saved content.
Despite being highly likely to save a videos, TikTok users showed ambivalence toward rewatching them.
I made note of this interesting finding and explored the topic further during user interviews to better understand why users may not want to rewatch saved videos.
Users save videos but rarely rewatch them due to not being able to find them
Although users often save Shorts into playlists, they rarely revisit them mainly because it’s difficult to find specific videos.
Without a search feature, they must scroll through dozens of saved videos. And even with search, short-form videos lack clear titles and rely on descriptions or hashtags that most users ignore making keyword-based searches ineffective.
This friction discourages rewatching, not from lack of interest, but from the effort it takes to locate a specific video.
Ideation
YouTube Shorts is missing a fundamental feature: the ability to save videos. However, simply adding a save function is not enough to support users’ goal of rewatching content.
User research revealed that while TikTok users frequently saved videos, they rarely revisit them. The main reason? It’s difficult to organize or search through saved content.
This challenge isn’t unique to short-form videos. I explored how other industries like e-commerce tackle similar problems. Sites like Amazon and Etsy use tag filtering and categorization for organization.
Drawing from these patterns, I explored a solution where users could optionally add tags and save Shorts to playlists when bookmarking a video. While both steps are optional, they’re highly encouraged, as they make it significantly easier for users to locate and revisit saved content.
By introducing a save experience that encourages purposeful organization, YouTube can differentiate itself from competitors and better support user needs.
Initial Mockup
Saving a Video to a Playlist
When saving a Short, users are prompted to add tags by either creating their own or selecting from suggestions and to choose a playlist to add it to.
While both steps are optional, they are highly recommended to help users easily find and rewatch Shorts later through filters or organized playlists.
Step 1: Save a video
Users save a video by tapping on the ‘Save’ button on the side bar.
After doing so, an overlay menu will appear prompting users to add tags.
For the new design, I replaced the ‘Remix’ button with a ‘Save’ button on the sidebar as the icon below it serves the same function.
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Step 2: Tags Overlay Menu
The tag overlay menu will prompt users to enter custom tags and/or choose from suggested tags
By default, all saved videos will be stored in a ‘Favorites’ playlist. The user can skip adding tags or adding a video to playlist by tapping outside of the overlay menu.
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Add to Playlist
Users can add a ‘Short’ to a playlist after adding tags. Although tags are not required to add a ‘Short’ to a playlist, it is recommended as it can be used to later find it.
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Custom Tags
Users can create their own tags to associate the video with that can be later used to find videos in a playlist.
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Suggested Tags
Instead of creating custom tags, users can select suggested tags. The suggested tags consist of commonly used tags by the user/other users and hashtags used by the creator.
Step 3: Playlist Overlay Menu
After entering custom tags, users can add videos to a designated playlist for further organization.
Users are not required to add a video to a playlist. Although it may help, they should be able to easily find videos in the ‘Favorites’ playlist as long as tags are used.
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Create New Playlists
If users do not have a playlist they want to add to their current list, they can create a new playlist.
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Add to Playlist
Users can scroll through their current playlists to designate where to add the video to.
Finding a specific Shorts in playlists
When users have a specific Shorts they would like to rewatch, they can navigate to a playlist and use tags to filter through their videos.
Step 1: Filtering for Shorts
By default, a playlist will display long-form videos and Shorts.
Users can filter the playlist to only display Shorts by tapping on the “All” to view and select the ‘Shorts’ option.
Step 2: Using tags to find a video
Users can tap on "Tags" to further filter videos in a playlist by selecting tags that are associated with the video they are looking for.
Adding tags to a video is recommended because otherwise users are limited to scrolling through the playlist to find it.
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Enter Tags
If the user remembers the tag associated with the video, they can type it in the text box.
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Most recently used tags
Users can quickly access tags that they use most often. If they cannot find the tag they are looking for, they can enter their custom tags or tap on "View all’".
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Tags: View all
This page displays all available tags in the designated playlist. Only tags used for videos contained in the playlist is displayed.
Testing
To determine if my solutions addressed user’s needs, users were asked to:
Task 1: Save a video using tags and save it into a specific playlist
Task 2: Find the recently saved video in a playlist using tags
Overall, all users were able to save and find a video without major issues and completed the tasks under a minute. Many expressed favor in being able to use tags and filters in a playlist to find certain videos.
All users tapped ‘Sort’ instead of ‘All’ to filter playlist to only display ‘Shorts’
Misleading terminology and iconography
Users mistakenly tapped the ‘Sort’ button instead of ‘All’ when trying to filter the playlist to show only Shorts.
The combination of the label ‘All’ and a grid icon made it appear related to layout or content categories, not filtering.
Improved clarity with icon change
Replaced the grid icon with a filter icon to clarify that this control filters video types (e.g., All, Shorts, Long-form), not layout or sorting.
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Lessons Learned
Looking beyond direct competitors for inspiration
This project posed a significant challenge, as existing successful platforms did not offer a satisfactory solution for users seeking to locate specific videos. As a result, I expanded my research beyond short-form media apps and examined how users may organize/filter content in other applications. This exploration ultimately inspired my solution.