YouTube Redesign

Above are my suggested tweaks for YouTube’s controls. Roll over the image to see the original clunky YouTubeâ„¢ Redesign.
I see the problems with this design being derived from a lack of cohesion in the metaphor. Buttons and interfaces of this style are always designed to be intuitive, and as such the metaphor is derived from the real world, & real world materials. It is the lack of commitment to that real world metaphor that lets the original design down. It’s not the only design that would work, but a clean design that would sit comfortably with most people, and one that doesn’t detract from the video content

The other major issue with this player is that it scales with the video. The controls should really only scale along the horizontal axis - ie expanding the timeline horizontally, and leaving the rest of the interface at the same scale. Many users (myself included) would also love to see a volume control such as the one on the right in place of the current “Mute” button functionality.

It’s been said that YouTubeâ„¢ users would like the options of choosing from a number of players. I see this as essential for embedding video seamlessly into your own page design. In the mean time however, a little redesign would go a long way.

======= Update 16-09-2006======

YouTubeâ„¢ have since incorporated the volume control as illustrated above, as well as corrected horizontal scaling issues I’ve outlined here. The interface itself is still as clunky as ever, but now it seems that you get a totally different ugly interface depending upon which parts of the site you visit.