Overview

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. But Shorts offers no way to save and organize videos into playlists.

My Role

As the UX/UI designer, I explored how playlist functionality could be extended to Shorts to improve content organization, rediscovery, and long-term engagement.

The Problem

YouTube Shorts does not allow users to save and organize short-form videos into playlists.

Problem 1

User frustration over a missing core feature of saving a short-form video into a playlist.

Problem 2

Need a method to organize and find their saved videos.

Final Design

Adding a save function alone would not solve the problem, so I looked beyond short-form video. E-commerce sites like Amazon and Etsy use tag filtering and categorisation to make saved items findable. Drawing on those patterns, users can optionally add tags and choose a playlist when they bookmark a Short.

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.

Want the full story?

The complete case study covers the survey and interview findings, the cross-industry research that inspired the solution, every screen in the high-fidelity flows, and the testing that drove the final iteration.

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