YouTube Kids TV Experience.

The YouTube Kids TV app was always a standalone app from the main YouTube TV app. In order to better serve kids, parents and achieve key company/product goals, the YouTube Kids had to create a YouTube Kids experience into the core YouTube TV app that bridged both products.

My Role

Lead UX Designer. Proposed what features should be included at launch and a road map of future features for follow up work.
Designed the UX and what features should be ported from both the YouTube Kids app and the YouTube App
Oversaw the work of the other designers including Visual and Motion design.
Constantly stayed aligned with multiple partner teams, including: YouTube main TV design team, YouTube Kids Eng team, YouTube main Eng team, YouTube Kids PMs and YouTube main PMs.

Project and Design Goals

Create a new experience that merges the best of the old YouTube Kids TV app with the best of the YouTube main TV app.
Port and redesign core YouTube Kids features while staying aligned with core Kids design principles. (IE stronger visual cues).
Create a UX that is appealing and engaging to kids but leverages core YouTube TV app UI design in order to achieve a stronger product parity.
Port all parental safety features and quality of life features.

Challenges

Both YouTube Kids and YouTube main have different design ideologies, combining them was a difficult and required a lot of communication, problem solving and buy in from multiple teams of PMs, engineers and designers.
Many features could not be rolled out at launch. Decisions on what to launch and what had to be follow up features had to be based on multiple competing challenges.