The Time When Lady Gaga Told YouTube to Keep its UX “Shitty”

What she meant was that as a community product it was important that we didn’t lose the authenticity of the product in an effort to upgrade the look and feel. Usability was separate from shine. A creator or fan needed to feel like their “fingerprints” could be left on the site. That the site is different for their participation. Incrementing a view count, commenting to a creator, “liking” a video, leaving a response. All of these features were meant to increase the feeling of accessibility and engagement. Allow folks to feel “I WAS HERE AND I MATTER.”

 

.. I think often of Gaga’s words when using Snapchat (OMG that’s a weird statement to write). Not because Snapchat looks “shitty” but because of the purpose it serves in framing the user content. First, the relatively starkness of the UI (framing the screen, mostly white icons, little text) allows the content to be front and center — as both a creator and viewer. Disposability of the content plus ability to write on pictures, etc all leads to intentionally ‘less than perfect’ composition — no filters, no editing. My fingerprints feel all over the content.

Stop Making Things Pretty And Start Designing

Print Design is Like a Symphony: structure, experience the same by everyone

Web Design is Like Jazz: basic structure but adapted, not experienced the same because you are designing for future content

Developers give feedback to the designers about what might work better

For Agile Development, You need to be able to:

  • communicate
  • collaborate
  • iterate

Design a grey-framed-wireframe: interactive but not fully developed

There is a WordPress theme to generate style tiles: Create a Style Guide

Developer works on a White-theme prototype (no style)