How would you design YouTube for kids?
Walmart- 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