Imagine you are the Product Manager of YouTube Shorts. What improvements would you make?

Explain the product - Youtube shorts as I understand is the short form video category of youtube which shows videos of not more than a minute. User’s can access these from the bottom nav of Youtube mobile app and the sidebar menu of Youtube Web. Users can watch these videos in an infinite scroll similar to the experience in Instagram reels. On each YT short, a viewer can perform actions like/dislike, comment, share, subscribe. Similarly, on each YT short, a creator can do a collab, green screen, use sound and cut the video to make their own content versions based on the original. Additionally a creator can create their own YT short recording or uploading media files as well as enhance their content using filters, touchups, lighting and a collection of audios.

 Youtube shorts as product/feature aligns well with Youtube’s mission of giving everyone a voice through the creator actions dedicated creation flow and on existing YT shorts as well as show people the world through smaller chunks of video content. This is a more engaging variation of Youtube videos and a more seamless way of encouraging people to start creating as well.

Clarifications:

1. What do we mean by improvement here? Do you have a specific feature of YT short in mind which does not have a great experience in the current state, or do you want me to think of it from an overall product pov ? Overall product

2. Great! Now unless you have a specific goal in mind for improvement, I would like to define that? Go ahead

3. Before picking up a goal, let’s discuss the different business and user goals that YT shorts has. So, YT shorts as I understand is an engagement feature through which YT wants its viewers to spend more time on YT by engaging with a variety of content within a short or same session duration. For the creators, its more of an activation lever where it wants to reduce the friction/ reduce the complexity of creating content and thereby encourage viewers to potentially turn into creators. Not to mention, creator activation would mean more content for viewers and thereby drive engagement on the viewer side as well. The third goal could be that of monetization wherein YT shorts surface ads through which it monetizes the sellers/business.

4. Do you have a specific segment in mind for which we want to improve YT shorts which will also help me narrow down the goal of improvement? You decide.

5. Ok. I would want to improve YT shorts for creators here because, it will have an impact  viewer side engagement as well in addition to activating more non-creators into starting their content creation journey.

6. Also, as most of the creators would be creating shorts in mobile, while thinking about the problems and solutions, I will keep a mobile first experience in mind.

Structure:  I will think of this problem as follows:

• Will try to segment our creators further because its a very broad bucket might not yield meaningful solutions as shorts has been for a while now. From among the deeper cuts, I will  pick 1 or 2 user types

• Will try to think of the needs and pain points for these users

• Will brainstorm on couple of solutions to solve these problems

• Will evaluate the solutions and propose a stack ranking of the same

• Will list down the metrics to define success for  our top solution(s)

User segmentation:

• Creators could be further categorized basis

  • Frequency - power(10+ shorts a  month), active(5 - 9 per month), passive 1 per month), dormant (stopped creating or yet to start)

  • Genre/categories - music, comedy, knowledge, travel, productivity, motivation etc

  • Profession - casual, influencers, business

  • Age - teenagers, adults, senior citizens

  • Entity - individual, group, institution

• As the goal is to focus on activating non-creators into creators, I would like to focus on dormant individual creators who want to create content casually (as a side hustle/hobby). I would like to specifically focus on adults (18 - 60) because they would be the largest group in our user base.

Needs/pain points:

1. I ran out of ideas to create shorts so stopped creating.

2. I barely/partially understand the nuances of creating content that will have good engagement. 

3. I want to know what type of content will be received well by others

4. I want to reach the right type of audience who will like my content

Of these problems, I would prioritize 1 and 2 being the primary reasons discouraging content creation and assuming a higher reach among users.

Solutions:

1. I ran out of ideas to create shorts so stopped creating.

   1. Ideas for you - Users will see a list of reference videos from popular creators. These videos will belong to a similar category that the creator makes videos in.

   2. Recommendation basis comment analysis - YT ML model will analyze comments and summarize content recommendations based on user feedback and comments on each new shorts.

   3. Content newsletter/report - Send a weekly newsletter/report to creators on content trends on Youtube shorts - emerging content types or categories, traction on different categories, popular creators etc.

2. I barely/partially understand the nuances of creating content that will have good engagement. 

   1. Video tutorial - Users can access tutorial videos of best practices for shorts creation. These videos will be accessible from their own channel home screen.

   2. Creator community - Build a community which will feature content creation strategies and practices videos by popular creators. People can also discuss in groups or open forums about content creation.

   3. Onboarding journey - Create an onboarding journey for first time creators, taking them step by step through the different shorts video creation steps and eventually creating a sample video.

   4. Mentorship - Creator mentorship program to encourage seasoned creators to guide beginners on content creation tips and tricks and live/online workshops. This will be a paid program to incentivize mentors to guide others well.

Prioritization

 I will evaluate these options basis impact and build effort 

Success metrics:

You tube shorts are the section in youtube for small size scrollable videos. Once you click on it you can scroll down to see other videos

You tube is a mature product. However, shorts are the newer addition in the youtube version and the closest rival of you tube shorts is the Instagram reels

Goal of you tube shorts

The vision of youTube shorts is to engage users to spend more time on the platform

The infamous thing about shorts is that some of the people thinks that it is a mindless scrolling and a waste of time.

Goal for the improvement

Make you tube shorts a worthwhile investment for people reviewing it

Pain-points

1.      Control content

2.      Time check

For time check we already have features in phones to set limits on the apps

Controlling the content as per once taste would be the value add youTube shorts can add

Solutions

1.      Filter shorts [ Impact – L | Effort – L]

a.      Tags to select for the shorts

b.      Once you select the tag, shorts get filtered

2.      Content swipe [ Impact – H | Effort – H ]

a.      Dynamic selection such as left for didn’t like and right for like

b.      Tailor the content based on real feedback

3.      Configurable shorts [ Impact – M | Effort – H]

a.      Voice commands or type short search

b.      Juggle videos and create a shorts based on the response

c.      More power to the consumer

I am gravitating toward content swipe feature as this would be refreshing and take real feedback. However, in the age of GPT, these kind of real time crunching is feasible

Key metrics to measure

1.      # Active users per day

a.      Atleast 2 reels per day

2.      % right swipe

3.      # right swiped shorts

4.      % time in shorts vs other features of youtube