ux – LIVEdigitally

YouTube Kids Review – and 10 Ways to Improve it

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Jeremy Toeman

We finally got around to downloading the iPad YouTube Kids app, now that more than half of my children can do things like spell words mostly correctly. And since there’s a bit of a family-wide addiction to Plants vs Zombies (1 and 2), they’ve been watching some gameplay video. Which got me realizing that a 6-year-old should not, at all, accidentally watch most of the results of “zombie” in a YouTube search. Enter YouTube Kids.

Here’s the family consensus of the strengths of the app:

YouTube Kids does an excellent job filtering out anything age-inappropriate. In fact I put a dedicated effort trying to “trick” it with any means possible, and I couldn’t find a video that I considered PG-13, scary/gory, adult-themed, etc. Searching for “zombies” pretty much only showed animated results:
On a very special Thomas the Train, …

and a search for “game of thrones” showed mostly music videos, Minecraft interpretations, and other “safe” versions:

Good thing nobody has any free time to do anything creative anymore…

Nothing else that I threw at it, from curse words to Skinemax-level “soft” words, came back with results. I even tried using horror movies, explosions, Michael Bay, etc:

I hear Night of the Living Pharmacist has some pretty creepy moments

Considering this is probably the single most important role the app has, I’d call it a win if your goal is to let your kids autonomously search for videos about topics that interest them.
It’s exceptionally easy to find copyrighted materials. A search for Shaun the Sheep (family favorite) instantly provided full episodes:
It’s Shaun the Sheep!

And pretty much any search for “title of movie full movie” presented exactly that (including Frozen, Lion King, He-Man, etc):

The illegal copy never really bothered me anyway

Interestingly I couldn’t find PG-13 level movies, so Harry Potter was absent, though the Harry Potter Lego Version was all over the place.
Exploring and discovering learning/educational content actually is interesting. There’s tons of solid channels available, from LEGO to National Geographic and more.

I’d certainly call this an acceptable experience, but I’m nowhere near calling it Great. Which is disappointing, because I think it could, and should, be great. It unfortunately falls into the category of what we call “babysitter apps” – which are exactly the ones we try to avoid. We just prefer the apps that really engage our children, or that we want to use along with them. And from our perspective it falls short.

So here’s how I’d improve the YouTube Kids app:

Actually age-restrict Settings. Here’s what it looks like for “adult mode”:
That’s the same combination for my luggage!

While my 6yo can’t fully read, he’s got the numbers down already. Which makes the above beyond simple. Either enable a PIN-code, or have a math problem, but it needs to be a bit more serious than this.
Enable simultaneous search and playback. Just like in the main YouTube app, it should be easy to have a video playing while searching for the next one you want to watch / queue up.
Enable a queue / playlist. While search results become automatic playlists, as do channels, there’s no way to build your own simple playlist as you go. Maybe my 4yo couldn’t handle that, but the older ones certainly could.
Save a playlist. Would be great for music videos especially.
Mark/save favorite videos. If you are unfamiliar with children, there’s never ever been a video any child has ever watched only one time. More like 300 times.
Add Recently Watched/History. Per the above.
Subscribe to Channels. As you may have gathered by now, there’s virtually no personalization in the entire app. Why can’t I save my favorite channels, and have those appear on “my” home screen? The generic Home view is pretty useless after the kids have browsed it a few times. Also, being able to automatically find “latest episodes” from channels is a pretty core YouTube feature – one that the kids should get too.
Add “Show More Results” to search. Because otherwise you can never, ever, find certain videos!
Add a Web experience. Seems like a pretty natural extension, and my children do use this archaic thing I have called a computer. And once they’ve been using YouTube autonomously on the iPad, I’d like to enable them to do so on the laptop too.
Allow for age ranges. Again, there’s no 8yo who wants to see the same stuff as a 4yo. With a simple range (2-4, 4-6, etc) setting, the experience would be so much better and tailored to the individual.

I’ve tried to keep the feedback fairly “light” here – things that aren’t monumental shifts in the app, but would fundamentally improve it at every level. I could go on at much more length at how to make a truly great Kids experience, but I’ll save that for another time.

Again, it’s a great start at an awesome experience, but still falls short IMHO. Though there’s one total saving grace I may have forgotten to mention. So thank you, very much, Team YouTube Kids, for this:

her?

Decoding "I Cracked It"

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

As Nick Bilton wrote:

“I’ve finally cracked it!” Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple, told his biographer, Walter Isaacson.

This topic seems to come up time and time again in the “future of TV” discussions, and was revived today over at AllThingsD: “Though it’s currently only embedded in the new iPhone 4S, Siri could eventually change the face of the TV industry.” I’ve seen a few other stabs at what “cracking it” could possibly refer to, but none seem quite right.

First, regarding voice-controlled TVs. Is this part of the future? Absolutely, unquestionably, undeniably. Siri hacking is already a hobby, and the idea of “TV, channel 702 please” or “TV, Watch The Office” or “TV, Record New Episodes of Arrested Development” all sound great. But how much of an improvement is this really?

I’d call it a minor enhancement – specifically in context to all the action happening in the second screen. If you can pick up your smart phone or iPad and perform roughly the same query in one of dozens of apps, then “talking” this command doesn’t really sound like a HUGELY big deal. It sounds incremental. And “cracking it” doesn’t seem like it’s about incremental. As I’ve written about previously, I don’t think it’s about physical gestures either, and as I’ll write about more in the future, it’s unlikely “apps” nor about some “new” 10-foot user interface (those are terrible, and are dead, thankfully).

What if the interview wasn’t about some futurey thing we’ll see one day? What if it’s not some mystical innovation that we can’t possibly fathom? See, I talk to virtually everybody in the future of TV industry, and not a single person seems to be able to imagine what this could be. That’s a whole lot of smart, industry-relevant, savvy people to be so in the dark.

So I’m going to take a giant leap backwards on the statement “I cracked it” and instead of looking at what might come, I’m looking at what’s already there. See, from my eyes, the single biggest improvement to the TV experience I’ve ever seen happened last year. I think “I Cracked It”exists, and it’s called AirPlay.

AirPlay takes a fundamental mindshift from thinking about whats happening ON the screen, where you have to use a remote (or gesture or voice or whatever) to control some awkward, ill-performing, frustrating, fundamentally LOUSY user interface. AirPlay shifts the interface to your favorite location, the device you hold, and carry with you all the time. AirPlay enables you to have the most organic, natural, helpful user experience you can, then just shift that experience to the device you want, easily and flawlessly. It’s an awesome experience.

For the record, I don’t mean this to be a gush about Apple TV / AirPlay – merely the experience the two together provide, one I anticipate will be replicated by others, and soon. The future of TV interfaces will be controlled by your second screen, and you’ll have one simple way to get it to the screen of your choosing. Today that’s done by AirPlay, but by the end of 2012 you’ll see this type of offering from a variety of manufacturers and app providers.

The first “moment of change” for TV user interfaces happened in the late 1990s by TiVo. The next one happened in 2010, by Steve Jobs & Apple. And yes, he cracked it.

I'm in like with Siri

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

While Mat from Gizmodo is calling Siri “Apple’s broken promise” (and he makes valid points) I see it a totally different way. I’ll open with his closing argument:

And for me, once the novelty wore off, what I found was that Siri is not so intelligent after all—it’s simply another voice program that will obey very specific commands. If it knows those commands. If it can understand you. And if it has a network connection. Were this Google, or Microsoft, I’d shrug. But it’s not, it’s Apple. And Apple is the company that sells perfection. It’s a company that usually keeps its promises, and in its Siri ads, it promises far more than what it actually delivers. That’s not what any of us signed up for.

I’d agree with most of that. So it’s really about managing expectations. I will agree with Mat that the commercials and hype around Siri do not set the right expectations. If you think you can talk to your phone and it’ll just do exactly the thing you said, the way you meant it, you are in for a world of disappointment. This was about how I felt back in the first few days of taking Siri for a test spin (talk?).

Now, a few weeks later, I’ve found Siri a great component of the iPhone 4S overall experience. Today I had to get to the office, was driving, and was in a rush. “Driving directions to work”. Perfect. Last week, wanted to know when Hannukah starts. “When is Chhhhanukah?”. Winner. Again, driving, running late to get home. “Send a message to my wife” followed by “Stuck in traffic will be home soon”. Bingo.

If you can get your head around how Siri works, what it knows, and more importantly, what it doesn’t know, you can really enjoy the ability of controlling a device by talking to it. It can’t do a whole bundle of things I want it to do, for example:

“Turn on Bluetooth” – this would be awesome. Not present.
“Launch Evernote” – yup.
“Read me my last email” – cool, thanks!
“Browse www.livedigitally.com”. must-have.

There are effectively no limits, no upper bounds to what an enhanced or improved interface could offer over existing ones. This is true for gestures, for voice, for physical recognition, etc. But, in all cases, the user must know absolutely what they’ll be getting out of that experience. If the consumer expects too much, and is delivered too little, they’ll abandon it. This is true for trusted experiences as well – if a gesture is inconsistent, or voice-to-speech is intermittent – consumers will try it, play around for a while, but mostly give up on it.

For me, Siri is in the “it can be handy from time to time” category, and as such, is something I’ve grown to like. I don’t use it often, because I know when it will/won’t help me out, but my “hit rate” is pretty good these days. It also has a good potential for amusement…

Smart TV: Not Dead Yet!

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

I'm Not Dead Yet!

There’s a post on Wired entitled “Smart-TV Space May Never Take Off as Predicted” in which the author quotes a comment from ViewSonic:

“’Smart TV’ has not achieved the consumer acceptance or market expectation… that was forecasted over the last couple years. In addition, consumer spending for Smart TV’s in general has experienced a significant slow down as the economy has slowed. Our current strategy is to stay involved with the various technology developments and consider them in the future as they become available.”

Now with all due respect to ViewSonic, the last time I checked they didn’t rank in the top 5 TV manufacturers, and based on looking at prior years reports, my hunch is they represent somewhere between 0-3% of TVs sold (they do well in monitors, not as much in TVs). So when they predict Smart TV to have a problem, perhaps they aren’t the voice we should be using, as compared to companies such as Samsung, who has over 2 million Smart TVs in homes already.

Source: DisplaySearch Quarterly Advanced Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report

As Michael Wolf, of GigaOM, tweeted: “Folks, Viewsonic is not the bellweather company by which to judge success of embryonic sector on #smarttv.” Now that said, I completely agree with James McQuivey (Forrester analyst who is hitting Smart TV issues squarely on the head):

“What’s happening in the connected TV space is it’s not really about what consumers want, it’s about what manufacturers are making,” Forrester principal analyst James McQuivey says. “Simply having a connected TV doesn’t mean you’ll actually use it.”

According to all the analysts and manufacturers I’ve spoken with personally, and that’s virtually all of them, the industry is pretty well agreed that somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of all Smart TVs actually get connected. Further, the vast majority of them are just using them for Netflix, and just about everything else is getting pretty well ignored (stats show the #1 Smart TV app is Netflix, #2 is YouTube, and #3 is “other”).

The Wired author goes on to cite failures of the Google TV Revue box as more evidence to why the market is stuttering. The truth is, the Revue box is failing because it’s a lousy product with a poor customer value proposition, and Kevin Bacon commercials aren’t enough to pull the wool over it. But this would be like saying there’s no SmartPhone market because the BlackBerry Storm wasn’t so hot.

Wait a sec, that's not a touch screen!

Last January I wrote a piece for Mashable called “5 Reasons Connected TV Could Flop in 2011” and in my opinion, all 5 of those problems are happening. And I don’t see anybody really emerging out of the pack to do it any better – yet. In fact, I’d wager we’re going to go a full calendar year from now before seeing signs of change. And here’s why:

The TV UI (aka “ten foot user interface” aka “lean back UI” aka “onscreen display”) is simply unable to scale to meet the demands of convergence. I’ll write more on this topic in the next couple of weeks, but mark my words: we have utterly reached the apex of functionality of all forms of TV-based user interfaces/experiences.

I believe TiVo pushed the concept to the breaking point with their original UX back in 1999, and I’ve seen nothing push it further since. Yes, there are some prettier looking things out there, with beautiful icons/etc, but from a UX standpoint, we’re well past the zenith of what you can do with a remote. And no, I don’t believe gestures are going to cut it either, and I’ll go into depth on that topic in an upcoming post as well.

I'd change the channel, but honestly my arms are just too tired.

The last point on Smart TV I have is this – the biggest “thing” that’s going to slow down all forms of growth is replacement cycle consideration. If you buy a device once every 7-8 years, yet know intrinsically that the technology inside that device will be outdated long before that, you are less likely to buy it. The only way manufacturers can solve this problem, as far as I can see it, is through a modular component that will enable future-proofing of the set. Hm, yup, time for a blog post on that.

So is the Smart TV world fragmented? Yes. Confounded? Yes. Faced with turbulence? Yes. Full of shoddy products that are causing backlash and poor word of mouth due to radically complicated living room experiences when all we want to do is kick back, turn on Bear Grylls, and have a beer? Absolutely. Dying? Nope, not even a tiny bit.

Why the Mac App Store is Game-Changing

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

Apple today launched their “Mac App Store”, something I must admit I didn’t fully “get’ at first. Originally I assumed it was simply a dashboard-like interface for easily porting iOS apps to OS X. It’s not, it’s far from it. It’s actually solving one of the biggest problems plaguing “typical” computer users – downloaded and installing software.

This conversation should sound familiar to anyone under the age of 40 who has parents who use computers.

Me: did you try out [[[SOFTWARE]]] yet?

Parent: I couldn’t get it to work.

Me: huh, why not? it’s pretty simple to use.

Parent: I don’t know, it’s just not on the computer, I don’t know why.

Me: did you install it?

Parent: Yes!

Me: okay, so what’s the problem?

Parent: Not sure, after I went to their website I never could get it to open.

Me: what happens?

Parent: It always tells me its installing.

Me: so you ran the installer?

Parent: yes.

Me: so what’s the problem??

Parent: I have no idea, fix it next time you come over. How are the kids?

The reality of the world is tons of folks are downloading, but the successful installation and execution of software on computers is an utter mess. And yes, even on OS X it’s a mess – why would I want to drag into the Applications folder? Why isn’t that automatically done? How do things get in the dock? Etc. The App store fixes all of this, and fixes it well.

With the latest OS X upgrade, the App Store appears in the dock automatically. Upon launching the user is required to sign in to their Apple account (probably the worst part of the experience, as it should just pull in iTunes account info), then they can download/install/run new software as effortlessly as they can on an iPhone/iPad. The new app automatically installs and adds itself to the dock – that’s it.

One other “oh, sweet” moments I had while perusing the App Store? No, it wasn’t Angry Birds (seriously, yawn much? it’s an okay game, but it’s time to move on. it’s like after they started airing “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” seven nights a week!). It was finding iMovie ’11 available for individual purchase. This is another important move, as Apple is unlocking the previously bundled iLife (and iWork) suites. Perfect for folks like me who like the features of one ’11 app but not the other (in my case – I don’t want iPhoto ’11 yet). This creates a lot of opportunity not just for Apple, but for other software vendors seeking to “break up” packages and make incremental additional revenue from the extras.

It’s not perfect, by any means. There’s still no solid UNinstall, which is a big missing part (try AppZapper – thanks @MG!). For example, I can’t sort by Ratings, there’s no ability to preview apps, etc. The store is so simple that at times it truly feels simplistic. Some categories seem odd (does weather need a whole category?) and others completely under-developed (games? one category for ALL games?). I’d also like to see screenshots get replaced with screenflows/video demos. But that’s about the entirety to my complaints at this time, and that ain’t bad all things considered.

Since the original dot-com explosion, the tech industry in general has avoided new consumer-facing software like the plague. Half (or quarter) baked Web ideas or apps get funding out the wazoo, but tell an investor that there’s downloaded software involved (worse yet – a plug-in), and they run for the hills (well, not really, since they’re probably on Sand Hill already, but that’s just a weird wording thing). It’s funny that we’ve needed the success of the mobile app market to revitalize the “old fashioned” software market, but that’s exactly what the Mac App store is going to do.

If there’s one thing we can truly say the App store “killed” today, it’s the traditional installer. And rest in peace, but you won’t be missed.

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