5 - Kyle Hiller

When working on project 3 we were working on redesigning YouTube to how we (as a team) thought it would work/be designed better.  This is, at first, a difficult task to do to something that most people are so used to the design and format the way it is simply due to the fact that most people are constantly using YouTube.  However, when stepping back and thinking outside the box it was clear that there were definitely aspects to the design that could be changed.  This brought up the question of what was necessary and what was not.  This relates directly to "The Unnecessary Test" from the textbook where it lays out the steps to go through when determining what exactly is needed in the design of something, and what might not actually need to be included.  After completing project 3 and thinking of our final redesign, but now going back and thinking about it with the question of "Does this feature contribute directly to the completion of the task?" I have realized that there could be a couple more changes to our design.  The final design has a row of videos on the bottom of the screen for the "Related videos" section that is see through, and becomes fully visibly and colorful when the cursor is moved/hovered over any of the videos.  Our original thinking and reasoning behind this was to keep as many distractions to the user away from them giving all their focus to the video that was actually playing.  But after asking this question to myself I have realized that this feature does not directly contribute to the completion of the task of watching the video on the screen, it just pulls away the user's thoughts and attention if they begin to glance at the row on the bottom.  So, I would take this part away, and have just a tab labeled "Related videos" on the screen that would bring up those related videos.  But with this design, the user is only going to look at the related videos if he/she chooses to do so.  Otherwise, there wont be any distractions at all from the original video being played.  Less is better when it comes to many designs, and this case is no different.  This technique of making yourself ask and analyze what part(s) of your design are actually necessary and whether or not a specific feature contributes to the completion of the task is very helpful and allows for designs to become even better.