CBS Sports Video UX Research

CBS Sports as well as many other sports news sites struggle with several questions regarding video experience as a whole. What is the standard for video experiences? Do we need video home pages? How do sites handle video controllers? Advertisements? Extensive research is needed to answer these questions both introspectively in CBS Sports case and externally in relation to CBS Sports' Competitors. CBS Sports is in a place where they've fallen behind on their video experience and want to answer these questions in order to start moving towards an improved experience.

I tackled attempting to answer a large research question: What is the Industry Standard for Video User Experience and How Do We Meet and Exceed Those Expectations? and presented findings on how CBS Sports should position itself for a redesign. I reached out to individuals at CBS Sports to get metrics on the current video performance and critically analyzed CBS Sports' existing video integration; conducted a competitive analysis of CBS Sports' direct and indirect competitors; compiled qualitative and quantitative data on the research; and laid out key areas for opportunity and things to avoid in restructuring it's video experience.

Analysis of Current Video Experience
Before starting research on CBS Sports' competitors, I analyzed CBS Sports's own video integration and overall user experience. Starting from the Video Home Page, aesthetically, CBS Sports is behind the curve and is reminiscent of an early 90's interface that is a dump of all videos from the site.

Outwardly, engaging with videos is stilted and forces page redirects if you encounter videos on a hub page. Other than directing to the Video home page, it is hit or miss for users looking for video and article content together. While the video integration in articles is standard, there doesn't seem to be a consistent plan of attack for giving users' video content and offering them a non-intrusive way to consume it. Rather, there are segmented sections where videos are present, but are inherently segregated from a cohesive experience. In other words, the pieces are there but they aren't connected.

Research Strategy
There are two distinct categories in which you can approach and research video integration. The controls and physical presentation of video players and the overall experience for which video is accessed, displayed, and consumed. Though it is possible to analyze these things together, I separated these two categories and researched them individually to get a thorough understanding of the industry standards for both practices and not a watered down combination of both. While there seem to be a mixed review of standards for physical video controls, experience tactics are even less so defined..

Essentially, a competitive and heuristic analysis would be the primary way to determine industry standards for video user experience. From that point, I then selected a number of key competitors, both direct and indirect, to begin gathering research on video control and experience. I structured my findings into 2 separate qualitative documents for video control and experience respectively, developed a form to log quantitative data from the qualitative outline documents, and critically analyzed both quantitative and qualitative data to give the Video team a direction in which to start.

There's a Lack of Clear Video UX Standards
First, no one has video UX figured out completely. Though one could argue if anyone ever figures out anything completely. Regardless, there were a few rays of sunshine with some of these sites, whether it were integrating article and video content well on the home page or having a reduced number of redirects to actually watch the video you wanted to watch in the first place. However, most of these sites really struggled on providing a consistent experience based on what the user is trying to achieve and violated expectations of what users suspect will happen when they try to do something. I believe that the lack of consistency of standards shown in both my background research and my competitive analysis are due to the fact that we are still just on the cusp of the video takeover. Research shows that video is one of the top performing types of content on the web and everyone is scrambling to make sure that even if their video integration experience is subpar, that they at least have video content. This has not only given way to really varied interactions and experiences across different competitors, but within a single website as well. The lack of standards and consistency give way to several issues when addressing how businesses integrate video into their platforms: Poor Direction, Ignored Expectations, and a lack of Contextual Understanding.

Poor Direction
Good experiences mean knowing where to go without inherently being told how to do so. Most of the sites I analyzed, CBS Sports included, had experiences that had no clear direction path for users to get the content that they actually want to see. There were video hub pages with never ending categories, no organization and confusing queues for accessing additional videos, among other things. A lack of direction in a sea of videos and information is frankly overwhelming for anyone. It also begs the question of how do users want to consume videos, where do they want to be directed, do they want simultaneous article content while they watch. These are questions that must be answered with interviews and user testing.

Ignored Expectations
A question that every businessperson must critically ask themselves is: What are my users expectations? This can be extended and expounded upon in many terms both business, design and otherwise, but the fact remains is that users have expectations. We should understand what they are in order to meet those expectations and provide the opportunity to exceed them in the future. Most sites had consistently different ways for users to engage with videos either with modals, inline playing, or page redirects that were used seemingly sporadically and without rhyme or reason. Clicking on a particular video in one of those sites could do one of numerous things, which gives the users no standard for what to expect to happen. This is an opportunity for CBS Sports to define expectations by strategically planning the way that video can be accessed and ensuring that users know what will happen with they try to access a video.

It's All About Context
On an overall thought about the qualitative and quantitative data I trudged through, the ways by which you address these questions and issues are all about context. It is also about your user base. Though we may look to Youtubes and Netflixes as a great way to consume video with fairly decent experiences, the layout, interactions, and experiences don't necessarily directly translate to a standard for all video integration. In other words, you need to understand your core business (CBS Sports is sports news), what your users want and need, and to define the context in which they engage with video or wish to engage with video. CBS Sports currently falls under the umbrella of needing to define and understand that context, which needs more user-centric research and contextual implications of their engagement.

Closing Thoughts
What started as an attempt to scope out the competition and determine industry standards, developed into more of an analysis of what is happening with video integration across several news and sports news sites. The specific qualitative and quantitative data (NDAs) did give an interesting look for CBS Sports to determine how to move forward in terms of some trending approaches. However, the grander picture of this research gives CBS Sports key pain points to remember and focus on when pursuing the redesign and positioning themselves better in terms of their current video integration. Ultimately, due to time and budget constraints there wasn't a chance to get a better understanding of our users through testing and interviewing. The overall takeaways, however, will serve as guidelines of what to consider and what to avoid in regards to video integration and experience.