5-Tim Wilson

Hoekman emphasizes in chapter 4 of "Designing the Obvious" that it is important to try to limit the amount of unnecessary features in your application and leave only the most crucial options remaining. Hoekman provides a few tests that the reader can put their design through to discover which features may "Nice to have."

For project 3 my group decided to update YouTube's home page in an effort to reveal to the user content on the site that they may not have known existed. We added links to different types of categories they could browse to discover new videos, like "Trending Now" and "Top Rated", as well as options to organize some of YouTube's popular videos into categories like "Sports", "News", and "Local".

I put the idea through "The Unnecessary Test" and these were my results:

1. Is there more than one way to complete the task this feature supports?

The interesting thing about us showing the user "Trending Now" videos is that when I returned to the site after submitting the project, the "Recommended Videos" portion of the home page had been replaced with a "Popular on YouTube" channel. It seems as if Google is using search history in an attempt to find out what the user wants (which everybody knows). So, the answer to this question could be either yes or no, depending on if they user has tried to search for "popular" YouTube videos. However, the purpose of our design was to show users things they might not have known were available.

2. Does the feature contribute directly to the completion of the task?

Yes, I believe it does. Our feature showed users a few examples of types of videos they will find by following the links, which is a way to garner interest in the feature. As soon as they've becoming interested in our feature and start exploring it has done its job.

3. Is the task this feature supports vital to the activity this application supports?

While it depends on what Google sees as the main purpose of YouTube's home page is, the obvious answer here is no: Users can still easily search for and find videos using keywords in the search bar at the top of the page. However, if Google wants that page to draw more views to videos in categories the user has never seen, then I believe an updating of the homepage is vital.

After taking this test, it appears as if my group's project may not be vital after all, and could be a candidate for removal. Still, providing the user with more ways to stick around on your site couldn't possibly be a bad thing, could it?