jaylinjohn

Product Designer

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I visualize complex realities & realize them with simplistic designs.

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Background Skills and Tools

UI Design

Background Skills and Tools

Jaylin John

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Jaylin T. John © 2025

Enhancing The In-App YouTube Comment Experience

If YouTube can pride itself on one thing, that could be its engagement. YouTube is home to a wide variety of content and creators. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users and a constant stream of activity, YouTube is certainly a space meant for content interaction.

The YouTube Comments allow users to interaction with the creator and other people on the engine. Whether in-app or online, the comment section is meant to provide a space for users to engage socially.

Although YouTube comments are useful in sparking and maintaining conversation, people are stuck in the monotony of the gray commenting landscape. YouTube is yet to push the bounds of what the comment section can bring.

How might YouTube enable users to have hierarchical interactions in the comment section? How might changing the comment landscape get people to participate, bring more value to commenting, and boost viewership and engagement?

7 Min Read

Full Stack Designer

My Role

Timeline

Feb - May 2025

User Experience Design, User Research, Interaction Design, Prototyping, User Flow

Tools

Skillset

Figma, Photoshop

YouTube Commenting Is Yet to Reach Its Full Potential

Going into this, my original hypothesis was: If the YouTube Comment Section had better, more engaging features, user participation will spike along with content viewership and engagement, which in turn would have a higher likelihood of bringing more people to the app

Current YouTube Comment Section

How Current Users Interact With Youtube Commenting

After interviewing Eric, Malika, and Emilia, I realized that the commenting in and of itself is more biased than I had imagined.

“I am a subscriber to only a handful of content creators. The videos that I comment on are the ones that are made by my favorite YouTubers: the ones I am subscribed to. Otherwise, I feel that other comment sections are foreign to me” — Emilia

1. Users tend to comment on videos in familiar settings.

“If there is something that really makes me angry and feel I should speak up, I comment. Otherwise, I just watch the video” — Malika

2. Users can be biased in regard to commenting when they have strong reactions.

“If YouTube had a comment section or features like Instagram or Reddit, I’d probably comment a bit more. I’m shy anyways so, who knows” — Erik

3. Users feel comfortable commenting in settings with more social features, especially those that are ambiguous.

Determining What Makes A Good Comment Section

Organization — A commenting space is can easily become overwhelming if it is not properly navigable.

Hierarchy — Having a variety of functions, utilities, and interactions is crucial for the success of a comment section.

Usability — With the proper use of signifiers and affordances alongside accessible functions could allow for an easy, expeditious user experience.

To create a space within in a social media settings with heavy activity, I decided to focus on these three non-negotiables going forward.

Figuring Out Which Features to Implement

I recruited a fellow classmate of mine, Troy Corbitt, as my brainstorming partner. After exploring, we decided on an opportunity:

Robust YouTube Comments Organizational Features: How might we be able to simplify the YouTube Comments experience to create a more inviting space? How might we create wider variety of experiences in the comment section to spark user initiative ?

What Happens After the Brainstorm?

Taking my analysis from the existing YouTube comments user interface, the brainstorm with Troy and, the user research with Eric, Malika, and Emilia, I laid the foundational elements for the user flow.

Proposed Interaction Menu

Prototyping a Specific Visual Design

Using Medium Fidelity Prototypes to Determine User Flow

I explored different ways to visually represent the various additions to YouTube Comments. I wanted to create new subcategories to properly filter the comments. Each subcategory splits each new commenting feature into their own setting.

After exploring these prototypes, I created a UI Kit that reflected the icons, components, typography, and colors used in the current YouTube app.

Comparing and Contrasting a New UI

Although new UI allows certain features to remain intact, such as the horizontal scroll feature designated for the interaction bar, the vertical scroll for the commenting area, as well as the “like”, “dislike”, and “reply” buttons, there needed to be slight distinctions.

Adding New Functions

The additional components necessary for deeper, hierarchical engagement focus upon creating more robust in-app reactions.

emoji reactions feature

the keyword search

sub-thread creation features

image adding capabilities

in-video appearance of time stamped comments

video tagging abilities

enhanced interaction bar

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Clarifying User Flow: Determining the Entry Point

By means of the interaction bar, users can sort through different types of comments and begin to engage with others amongst varied experiences.

Creating Cross-Interactions

To link and boost engagement, spark greater interest, and create deeper more lasting conversation between two or more videos meant allowing users the ability to tag and post other similar YouTube videos within the comments, which would create the opportunity for wider YouTube discovery and exploration.

Allowing the User to Structure Their Own Experience Along Hierarchical Interactions

The use of emojis can have a great influence on the success of a comment section and can deepen non-verbal interactions. Users can now react to comments by means of the emoji reactions feature.

Threaded Interactions

Additionally, users now have the ability to create sub-threads inside YouTube Comments. These sub-threads can have the capability to create hierarchical conversation structures that increase comment engagement, social connection, and interaction flow.

What I Learned

I learned that clarity is key. It should be at the forefront in all forms of communication, design, user flow and experience. A design that prioritizes organization, hierarchy, and usability can do great things if it coherent to those who use it. Otherwise, I cannot be used at all.

My design process taught me that I should be continue to work with other designers. Going through my first design process, I learned that time, collaboration, efficiency, and completion are things that must be balanced. I am a leader and an entrepreneur in many sense, but those roles can mean nothing without the people who surround me and the time it takes to get things done. While reflecting on the work I have done for this study, I have concluded that there is still work to be done. As with anything, there is always something to improve and I bask in that truth. I strive for perfection with everything I do with the realization that I am open to change and improvement, critique and constructive criticism. That is what it means — at least to me — to be a Designer.

Looking Forward

In the future I hope to continue my research on commenting features and how users interact with each other inside the digital world. I would also like to improve the emoji reaction feature and my explanation of the implementation. I’d like to explore the different ways a user might be able to add an emoji reaction. It would be really interesting to expound upon and simplify the various replying capabilities. Especially what happens when a user only replies with an emoji and if it connects to the emoji reaction feature. Lastly, I’d really like to specify, create, and design different safeguards and constraints for the new comment features. It would be a very important tool to ensure the safety of the new features, as they give so much power to the user.

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This is an independent case study for a project in Intro to Digital Product Design. I am in no way affiliated with YouTube.

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I am a Senior at Cornell University, pursuing a major in Architecture and I am so glad that I took this course.

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Jaylin John

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Jaylin T. John © 2025