Design in the Wild – You Tube’s Channel Tab Promo

Published on 15th February, 2007 by Stephen Lewis

I generally try to avoid publicly commenting on a design, unless it’s to heap gushing praise on it. I’ve been responsible for enough Alan Smithees to know that a designer’s best intentions are easily scuppered by any number of interested parties, from concerned clients to meddling MDs.

Once in a while, however, I come across a design decision that simply baffles me. Today was one of those moments, as I encountered this on You Tube.

You Tube is clearly a very successful web site, and I’m sure they have an entire team of people who thoroughly user test everything into the ground long before it gets released to the general public. But I’ll bet next month’s mortgage that right now, somewhere in the world, somebody is clicking on that shrunken duplicate of You Tube’s navigation, and wondering why nothing is happening.

What was the rational for reproducing the entire site navigation 10px below the actual site navigation? It’s utterly redundant. There’s no need to create a facsimile of the tab under discussion, it’s right there. Look, I’m pointing at it right now.

My hastily mocked-up alternative is hardly going to win any design awards, true, but at least this way there’s little chance of the user being confused by pointless repetition. There’s also the added bonus of a nice natural progression from the marketing message, along the arrow, and straight to the “action” button.