Case study: Organizing subscriptions on YouTube
Designed a feature that allows users to categorize and filter their YouTube channel subscriptions.
Role
Industry
Duration
Overview
As users grow their YouTube subscription libraries, they struggle with a single chronological feed that makes finding relevant content increasingly difficult. This project proposes a subscription filtering system that allows users to organize and filter their subscribed channels by content category, viewing preferences, and personal organization methods.
UX Research - Understanding Users
The research began with identifying key user challenges with the current subscription experience, ranging from explorers overwhelmed by content volume to dedicated fans who struggle with finding specific content amid their expanding subscriptions. Through interviews with active YouTube users, we discovered consistent pain points:
Users with moderate to large subscription libraries (10+ channels) found the chronological feed increasingly difficult to navigate Content diversity created cognitive overload as users mentally filtered different content types.
Many users abandoned the subscription tab entirely, despite valuing creator connections
User feedback consistently pointed to a need for an experience that is both simple and easy to navigate in motion, becoming a guiding principle for our interface.
The Challenge
Through this research, three core challenges emerged that affected diverse users across experience levels. First, the chronological organization became overwhelming as subscriptions grew. Second, the platform lacked adaptive features to adjust to users' changing content preferences. Third, users needed more support to curate their subscription journey, leading them to either limit subscriptions or abandon the subscription tab entirely.
The solution needed to consider YouTube's complex ecosystem, where a single user might follow educational channels, music performers, news sources, and entertainment creators simultaneously, with each category fulfilling different user needs.
Our Solution
We've designed a cohesive subscription organization system that responds to each challenge by adapting to users' evolving subscription libraries. Through a filtering sidebar integrated into the existing interface, users can quickly segment content by categories like News & Politics, Tech, Music, Education, and Live Music.
When users interact with the filtering system, the experience adapts to each channel's content type, providing contextually relevant options. The system allows users to create custom categories, modify existing ones, and sort their content by upload recency, viewing frequency, or alphabetical order.
Below is an image of the role of the proposed interface. We will detail the implementation in the sections that follow:
Design Process
The design process began with competitive analysis of content organization systems across platforms, focusing on examples from streaming services, social platforms, and digital content management tools. We prioritized user-tested mental models of content categorization while maintaining consistency with YouTube's existing interface.
The prototype development focused on:
Creating intuitive filtering mechanisms that integrated with YouTube's established design system
Ensuring the solution supports both casual browsers and power users
Developing a system that scales with increasing subscription numbers
Balance between automation and user control
Through usability testing with five participants, we evaluated the interface's simplicity and the flexibility of the filtering system. Users successfully completed common tasks and provided positive feedback about how the solution addressed their subscription organization needs.
Design Evolution
Through additional user testing after creating an initial prototype, some areas for improvement were identified. This included more robust add, edit, and delete features for subscription categories, as well as the ability to add channels to more than one category.
Key Features
Filter Organization — The system allows users to:
Toggle between content categories with simple checkbox selection
Edit or remove existing categories with intuitive controls
Add custom categories for personalized organization
Apply multiple filters simultaneously for precise content discovery
Outcomes
Our design principles - simplicity in motion, flexible but structured, and experience-appropriate guidance - formed the foundation of our solution.
The subscription filter enhances YouTube's core value proposition by:
Increasing content discovery efficiency for viewers
Transforming the subscription tab from underutilized to essential
Strengthening creator-viewer connections through improved content accessibility
The solution addresses both business goals (increased engagement and watch time) and user needs (effortless content navigation and sustainable subscription growth).
Next Steps
Future development would focus on developing better automated category suggestions based on user behavior.
