Eyes are busy with YouTube. The upper half of the page is separated into 11 parts/info sections: the title, the author info, the video,the player bar, the display options, the video info, the viewing stats, the popularity stats, the sharing options, the embedded section, and the commenting textfield. Too many redundant grouping means information overload and ugly UI design.
The feedback from those info sections is inconsistent and confusing. For example, when hovering on different buttons, the users get different feedback including underline, blue background color, red front color and shadow without callouts, shadow with callouts, and shadow plus front color with callouts.
The truth is it's hard to deal with so many kinds of feedback while some of them don't make any sense-- I'm sorry but I don't really understand what those 4 buttons mean when I first saw it and it really bugged me that I had to click on all the icons to finally get the right size.
The most weird part is the popularity stats section. The Like and Dislike are actions, and the graph is the result of those actions-- the former ones should be buttons are the latter should be a simple info-viz, examples everywhere!! The design should be simple, no need of any explanation, no callout please. And btw the thumb up & thumb down icons are probably the worst ones I've ever seen.
Engadget:
Facebook:
Digg:
I can't live without YouTube, but the newer versions really make me feel uncomfortable. Yea, hire some top UI and interaction designers.
Well, it seems YouTube noticed the problem and today they added callouts to popout, expand & fullscreen buttons. Nice job.
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