Usability – designing for people

There is no doubt that YouTube has revolutionised video sharing over the Internet. Regardless of which site cracked the technicalities first, the real revolution here is the fact that now anyone can upload video clips in a variety of formats, have them published on a decently navigable web site and, even more crucially, viewed by people without the need to download and install obscure plugins, drivers, codecs or any other cumbersome software. Assuming the ubiquitous Flash is present, there’s nothing else to install, nothing to configure, just click and view.

The whole process of video sharing took a huge leap forward in ease of use, if not quality. YouTube content is the real star, of course, but this still shows the enabling power of usability which in this case, helped to set video sharing free.