Case study · Kids & family TV
YouTube Kids
Crayola & Prisma, Living Room TV and mobile—learning, discovery, and parent-facing trust and safety, with a child-first, ten-foot and touch lens.
Personal note
I was brought in to add a fresh perspective on how parents experience YouTube Kids on the Living Room TV: fewer remote presses, faster paths into content, and a UI that can feel closer to the adult YouTube world—without losing what makes Kids feel safe and recognizable. That meant advocating for things like press-and-hold, fewer click states, and clearer navigation patterns at ten-foot distance. Kids are a different audience: many younger viewers can’t read yet, so the work has to lean on symbols, characters, and image relationships more than dense copy.
01
Framing the Living Room
Where we started
YouTube Kids on TV sits at the intersection of games and utilities—yet it can skew toward utility. Most children arrive from game-like experiences, not productivity software. Designing with familiar game ergonomics, while carefully introducing utility patterns, creates a gentler learning curve and a more engaging large-screen experience.
Day to day, work spanned the YouTube Kids Foundations design system, critique with partner teams, and build-ready deliverables that had to stand up to Google’s accuracy and trust & safety bar—especially on TV, where every extra step on a remote is costly.
02
Trust, ten-foot UI, and repeat viewing
What we heard
Interviews, audits, and design critiques kept surfacing the same family of pressures. The list below is the short version of what the product needed to design against on TV and mobile.
- Parent trust & privacy — Transparency can’t sit behind extra taps; on a remote, buried privacy flow reads as evasive.
- Wayfinding for pre-readers — Younger kids lean on recognition more than text; menu labels, icons, and layout need a consistent, scannable system.
- Repeat viewing & recall — Rewatch beats novelty for many children; “continue,” history, and character-first surfaces often outperform a flat grid of title cards.
- Ten-foot & touch reality — TV exaggerates type, contrast, and on-screen keyboard fatigue; the bar is what reads in real living rooms, not just passing AA in a comp.
- Opportunity map — Privacy copy and control clarity, more predictable content ordering, search state that persists, and child-appropriate color, framing, and input patterns across browse and watch.
03
TV, learning, and cross-functional craft
How we built
Design and user testing for Living Room and Learning focused on fewer steps, clearer focus and control states, and visuals that work for pre-readers. The same work moved through Google’s product and critique rhythm with design, product, engineering, and research, with legal, engineering, and Foundations in the loop so shipping UI stayed on-system and on-policy.
- Content & engagement — Findability and ease of use in targeted areas, including an 18% lift in engagement where the work landed.
- AI transparency — AI labeling to help families locate content and understand when AI is in play, with parent-facing disclosure patterns.
- Access & gating — Passcode, biometrics, and the “math gate” and related security states tuned for lower friction re-entry while keeping protections intact.
- Foundations & standards — Work aligned to YTK Foundations, Google / YouTube critique, and feature-level quality expectations before release.
04
Outcomes for kids and parents
Results
The goal was better discovery, calmer TV ergonomics, and parent trust—backed by measurable movement where the team targeted improvements and a review path fit for a family product at Google.
- Engagement — ~18% lift in engagement in focus areas, with improved findability and navigation.
- Clarity for families — Child-first layouts, TV-friendly focus and control patterns, and parent-facing trust & safety surfaces that could ship with policy and system alignment.
- Review & quality — Critique, cross-functional review, and sign-off with legal, engineering, and Foundations so child- and parent-facing experiences stayed accurate and shippable.