Youtube’s perfect use of behavioral economic principles
If you’re anything like me, you are addicted to YouTube. You smash the like button, comment your thoughts, and subscribe to your favorite channels. Also, if you’re anything like me, you’re a human. And humans tend to operate in weird ways. We don’t always behave the way we say we do or even rationally. This is why sites like YouTube rely on behavioral economics to keep people like us (YouTube lovers) interacting on their site.
BEHAVIORAL ECONMICS IN DESIGN
When we think of behavioral economics, we must consider the fact that humans are irrational. We don’t self-report accurately and designers study our behaviors through how we interact with their services. There are five behavioral economic principles when it comes to how humans behave in important situations, and designers use these principles to develop their products or sites. We are going to examine how YouTube uses three of these principles to their advantage so that consumers spend more time on their site and have an easier time navigating it.
DEFAULTING
The first principle we are going to look at is defaulting. This behavioral economic principle is used to provide shortcuts to the user. Humans don’t like to make complex decisions and prefer to stick with the status quo of what they know. Without us even realizing it, design helps guide us in making decisions. On YouTube, this happens in multiple ways, but the most obvious one is the algorithm.
YouTube’s algorithm is a recommendation system that allows users to see upfront which videos they would likely find the most fascinating or fulfilling to watch. When you first sign into your account on YouTube, your homepage is also your recommendation page. This is done by design. There are billions of videos on YouTube that you will probably never see in your lifetime. To search through it all feels more than daunting, it feels impossible. Our behaviors indicate that we don’t have the capacity to make these kinds of decisions, so we rely on the algorithm to choose content for us. This is a clear example of defaulting in YouTube’s design.
FRICTION COSTS
The second principle YouTube navigates well is friction costs. Friction costs are the roadblocks the user encounters when interacting with the design. These roadblocks will discourage a user from moving forward. YouTube does an excellent job understanding friction costs and designing their website to navigate around them. There are several examples I can think of like the “jump ahead” feature which allows the viewer to quickly skip sponsorship reads or the “chapter” feature which allows the user to navigate to different sections of the video by hovering over the play head and scrolling forward or backward.
The “jump ahead” feature is fairly new and one that had to be developed with friction costs in mind. Sometimes you could be watching a video and then the creator will take a moment to break and tell you all about the socks they are wearing. You used to have to scroll forward to avoid these bits, but with the “jump ahead” feature you can skip ahead in one single click. Gone are the roadblocks of guessing how far to jump ahead. This genius design makes all the difference for its users.
SOCIAL PROOF
We all have the desire to “fit in” in with our peers. The social proof principle is essentially the need to be a part of the pack and conform with society. We don’t want to be perceived as different, and we will make decisions based on that behavior. YouTube designers really understand this concept, which is why we see the “like” button on videos. Sometimes when a video is receiving a lot of attention, negative or positive, viewers want to be part of the crowd and click the like or dislike button just to fit in.
YouTube also recently incorporated a new “hype” feature which allows users to click a button that will essentially promote the video to other audience members. This creates a sense of community. The idea of other people sending hype is enough to push the average user to want to join the crowd and click the button. This feeds YouTube’s algorithm even more and allows users to discover new content. The social aspect of YouTube is one of the strongest in its design.
DESIGN IS ABOUT BEHAVIOR
The team that designs the user interface at YouTube knows how to navigate behavioral economics. They use the principles I mentioned above and make decisions in their design based on it. Every service you interact with is designed with intention and purpose. Maybe now you will notice the ways in which your favorite sites use behavioral economics to dictate their design. Is it anything like YouTube?