YouTube's error messages lack clarity, detail

YouTube is great for so many reasons - mostly the ability to play any song on demand for free. In light of the all of the free streaming music (Spotify, Mog and Rdio) services out there, Youtube has been doing this for a long time. Create playlists, share music with your friends, watch videos on your iPhone or a device connected to your TV - you can take the free music wherever you want.

I recently found a video for 'How to Live Alone (With the Dogs)' by The Pernice Brothers. Since their collection is hard to find (at least on Amazon and iTunes, I haven't called Laurie's in Lincoln Square yet), you can imagine how excited I was to be able to find it, play it several times and even share it with friends.

After watching the video, I wanted to leave a comment telling the world where I first heard it! But what should have been an easy task wasn't a good experience at all.

When it comes to usability in products, my favorite issue is error prevention and handling. That is, how a good design can prevent errors and provide a clear way to fix them.

After typing my comment and clicking 'Post', I didn't expect to get an error message. And I was really frustrated when the message only read 'Error, try again'. That's it? How would I fix it? I tried again (and again and again) and couldn't leave the comment because I didn't know what to do next. Error messages should describe what action the user must take to fix it. I never got to leave a comment. I went onto other songs, other things. What a waste of time!

Always provide clear, detailed error messages - frustrated users will quickly leave your site or app and discover music someplace else.

Comments

Setting a price alert on Stubhub

A few weeks ago, my wife and I really wanted to see Alvvays and Frankie Rose at Metro in Chicago. But the show sold out and I was left to look for tickets second-hand. I've used Stubhub before to purchase concert tickets but up until now, hadn't tried their Price Alert feature which lets you set a ticket price max and be notified when the price goes below it. The user experience from beginning to end was really good. The feature is easy to find and provides very mobile-friendly controls to create the alert. The Price Alert tab was prominent on the event details screen - very easy to find. Note: today (1/5/18), Stubhub has removed those tabs and you have to tap an Info button top right of the viewport to look for the same feature. It's a still a good UX once you get there but it's an additional step. The Price Alert feature is intuitive and uses tappable numbers to let me pick the quantity of tickets (not a clunky dropdown menu or less efficient plus/minus p...

Redesigning the MySpace music player

Originally a major competitor to Facebook, MySpace has evolved from a being a place for 'friendships' to an important site in digital music. Like Facebook, artists can create profile pages for fans to follow but artists can also embed songs into a music player for fans to listen to. This functionality has really opened the door for discovering new music (especially for new artists who don't have a label or a means of distribution and marketing). However, MySpace's music player (above) suffers from some usability issues including small controls and an inefficient screen layout . When advancing through a song, users have to move a very small slider control that requires unnecessary precision . An improved, larger control would be much easier to click and drag than the current small rectangle shape. Also, the two-row layout of songs in the artist's queue is inefficiently designed . A maximum of only five songs can be listed in the queue at one time and then user...

KEXP's new Apple TV experience

I love KEXP . It’s a listener-supported radio station in Seattle. It streams all around the world on its website and mobile app. And they’ve had a really good app for the Apple TV for some time - great to stream in the house at a high volume! And I’ve reviewed them before here . Oh, and also here . They recently released an excellent new version of the app for Apple TV. And although it doesn’t introduce a lot of new features, it’s way more visually engaging and maximizes the screen real estate much better than before. Here are some of the major changes... Additional, prominent functionality- Archive (stream any show from the past) and streaming Settings The old version had a lot of wasted, unused screen real estate while the new version makes more efficient use of the screen New, large, colorful tiles along the bottom represent each song played in chronological order You can scroll left and right to see history of songs played (much further back in history than before) Larg...

music UX