My internship started with the handover of a set of 5 'research activity cards'. Each card contained an activity (such as asking users of the kit to observe certain behaviours, or to interact with individuals and ask certain questions) designed for YouTube employees to conduct during events where they would be interacting with YouTube creators.

Objective

• The primary objective of the pilot study was to test the effectiveness of the research activity cards as a tool for connecting employees with the creators they design for.
• The Secondary objectives included:
  • Collecting research insights from users.
  • Collecting insights into how to improve on the kit and expand the activities.

Process

• With my mentor I took the set of 5 activity cards and created a 'research kit' to give to employees. This included: a tote bag, cards, pens, and a button.
• I took these kits to VidCon, a video content creator conference, and distributed them to all employees who were attending the conference.
• I coordinated with senior managers to brief employees on the kit, its objectives, and how to use it, before they arrived. This was done via email.
• I served as a point of contact throughout the event, distributing kits to latecomers, answering questions about the activities, and roaming the conference encouraging employees to complete the kit

Challenges

• Very specific branding requirements had to be followed in constructing the kit, with a short time-frame for sign-off.
• VidCon occurred in the 2nd week of my internship, requiring a great deal of work in a very short time to meet objectives.
• Encouraging employees to submit their results from the kit in a timely manner proved challenging.

Outcomes

• After the conference, employees used an internal Google form to record the results from their activities and input their experiences using the kit.
• 150 research kits were created, 120 were issued to staff and around 52 responses were submitted.
• I took those results and used them to identify key pain-points, likes, and concerns users had about YouTube, and employees had about the research kit.
• This led me onto the next stage of the project which was conducting focus groups to further tease out the results from the research kit

After the completion of the pilot study, and the analysis of its results, I conducted a series of follow-up focus groups with YouTube employees. These focus groups worked to further extrapolate on the results gathered by the research activities, and on the effectiveness of the kit itself.

Objective

The focus groups had two primary objectives:

• Further develop the results of the pilot study and identify key areas of improvement or concern for users.
• Identify elements of the research kit that were successful and determine areas that could be improved upon or that failed.

Process

• I coded the results from the pilot study and identified a number of themes that had emerged related to YouTube's users and services.
• I recruited volunteers from employees who had completed the research kit and organized a series of focus groups with 4 participants in each group.
• I created an exercise for the focus groups to complete. This exercise involved participants being given a large sheet of paper with post-it notes and prompts to elicit observations and user stories from their time completing the research activities.
• Once participants had completed the work-sheet, I moved on to using the post-it notes to categorize their observations & user stories using card sorting techniques.
• Finally, I then elicited input from the participants on their experience using the research kit and what worked and didn't work during the pilot study.

Challenges

• Scheduling participants and eliciting volunteers from the limited pool of respondents who turned in the research kit.
• Creating an activity that would maximize the amount of useful input I could get from participants. In order to do this I first went to a UX Strategist to get ideas for my exercise and then got input from them after I had developed my activity design.
• Compressing down the large amount of rich data from the focus group sessions into actionable feedback for a report was challenging.

Outcomes

• Following the completion of the focus group I took that data and the data from the pilot study and created a report detailing my results. These included feedback around important issues for content creators, site users and YouTube employees.
• This report was then published internally and received good feedback from colleagues.
• I then took the data from the focus groups and the pilot study concerning the research kit and began to work on iterations and improvements, which was the next phase of my summer project.

The final phase of my summer project was the iterative re-design and testing of the research activities, and the formation of a research activity library.

Overall, I managed to complete my summer project to a very high standard, despite taking on multiple other projects during my internship at YouTube. I learned a great deal about performing user research in a dynamic and often time-sensitive environment. Perhaps more importantly though I experienced conducting research outside of my comfort zone. Prior to my YouTube internship I had only completed research in very formal environments, usually in labs or other controlled settings. For this project I was out in the wild making sure the research kits were being distributed, supporting YouTube employees in completing the activities, and encouraging them to return the completed kits. Even when I performed research in more formal settings during this project, it was in new ways. Designing and creating the activities that the focus groups completed, and even doing a visual re-design on the research kit were new areas for me where I had to opportunity to develop new skills, and did so with a high degree of success.