Kid-Friendly YouTube Design: Ensuring Safe Content

Arnie Silvers

Just to be on the same page, I think YouTube wants to create a seperate offering for Kids.

Before, I go down the path of designing the product – I would like you to give a structure or lay down the broad roadmap of the process of finding solution. I want to start with looking at

Why is the product needed?
Who will be the key users?
Brainstorm some of the key pain points
What potential solutions can be built to address those painpoints?

I believe that YouTube as a platform has enabled its users to learn something new & get entertainment from different parts of world. For Kids as well, YouTube can provide similar experiences to learn from diverse set of people all across the world and a seperate offering is needed to make sure that kids does not get exposed to inappropriate content.

There are three key players of YouTube for Kids:-

1. Viewers or Kids themselves

2. Content Creators

3. Parents/Guardians

But this is a peculiar problem that viewers cant decide for themselves what content should they watch? Parents/Guardians are the one who are better at taking this decisions for them , so I will pick Parents/ Guardians of Kids(upto age of 8 years) currently as a User Type to focus on.

Possible PainPoints of Parents:-

What type of content Kids will be watching?
How to make sure that they watch it responsbily?
Are they learning anything?

I would like to prioritize the first 2 painpoints to resolve for as they are connected with Mission of YouTube to embrace diversity in watching videos but at the same time watching it responsibly

Possible Solutions:-

1. Build a Control Panel about Content their kids can watch:-

We need to ask parent to Select Category of Content( eg. Learning/ Playful Experiences/ Rhymes/ Extra-curriclar activities etc), ADs to be ON or OFF, Influencers to be ON or OFF etc.

2. Seperate Profile for Kids

Responsible Watching:-

This can include the following :-

1. Setting up the Daily Timer on Total and across various devices such as Mobile, TV, laptop/Desktop

2. Report to track thier watching activities

To priortize the solutions, I would look at:-

Solution	Relation with Mission/Vision	Efforts	Impact
Build a Control Panel	High	High	High
Separate Profile for Kids	High	Mid	High
Setting up Daily Timer	Mid	Low	Mid
Report on Watching	Low	Mid	Low

I will priortize the First 2 solutions.

Risk:-

Inappropriate Content being shown to Kids
Wrong Tagging of Content
External Partner Integration:- Maybe not a lot of Content creators comes up to create the content

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