YouTube Shorts are now available on televisions. Google has also provided information about the design process for bringing shorts to this new platform. This is a complete guide to the steps you need to take to play video formats made for mobile devices on your TV.
According to Google, product managers, engineers, designers, and researchers from the Shorts and TV teams met to discuss how to bring this new video format to the big screen. The Shorts experience on TV had to be as natural as the community’s mobile experience. YouTube previously had separate tabs for videos, shorts, and live videos.
Process of Planning and Design
Google’s unconventional study asked participants to write “love” or “breakup” letters about short-form TV shows. The “love letters” demonstrated that viewers enjoyed watching their favourite content in a community with friends and family. The “breakup letters” showed that users found it clumsy, slow, or lacking in important functionality such as sharing.
YouTube Shorts From mobile to TV
According to Google, watching “Shorts” on the big screen has specific advantages. The larger screen makes it easier to watch them with others. How could we keep the spirit of shorts alive with vertical videos on widescreen TVs?
Google discovered that the consistent video player (Option A) lost the joy of Shorts, and the jukebox style (Option C) deviated too far from Shorts’ one-video-at-a-time format. With a clean design, the tailored Shorts experience maximises large screen space.
prototypes to bring Shorts to life on TV
During the final design phase, the company created two high-fidelity prototypes of a customised Shorts video player using feedback from their most recent research. They were trying to find a balance between a pure viewing experience and Shorts and YouTube features like comments, community actions (like, subscribe), and related videos.
Sidebars and basic Shorts functionality are included in the “simple” prototype. The “maximal” prototype displayed related tags, comments, and a hazy background with colour samples. The “maximal” prototype was well received by the community. The color-sampled background modernised the experience and made better use of the available space on the TV screen.
YouTube TV Shorts Experience
- Videos from your YouTube homepage’s Shorts shelf or a creator’s channel page will play in the Shorts player.
- Users can interact with Shorts in these new places by liking or disliking videos, subscribing to creators’ channels after watching their Shorts, and reading the titles and descriptions of Shorts just like they do on their phones or computers.
Availability
The update goes live today, allowing users to watch shorts made in 2019 or later on their TV, streaming device, or gaming console.
Brynn Evans and Melanie Fitzgerald, UX Directors at YouTube, commented on the announcement:
As YouTube continues to make it easier to interact on TV, the richness of the Shorts experience will only grow. Bringing Shorts to TV is a great bridge to bring two of our most important experiences together to benefit both creators and viewers.
