Welcome to UXYZ’s third app critique for TikTok!
As of 2020, TikTok is one of the world’s best-loved apps. Which features of TikTok make it special? Is language the only difference between TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin? Besides, as Kuaishou and Douyin are the two leading short video platforms, what’s the difference between them? We try to answer these questions in this critique.
Target Audience
According to Reuters, 60% of TikTok users are aged between 16–24. MarketingCharts TikTok data (March 2019) finds over 50% of TikTok users in the US are aged 18–34 — with a nearly even split between 18–24 years old and 25–34 years old.
TikTok is unique with its short videos. Most of them are in 15 seconds, up to 60 seconds, ideal for users to use in their free fragment time. The lack of competitive products, the operation and marketing strategies of local teams (including teams from Misical.ly) are critical to its successful launching in the US market.
Product Walkthrough
TikTok has 4 tabs on the bottom: Home, Discover, Inbox and Me.
The Home page has 2 tabs on the top: Following and For You. For new users, Following is where you use card-swapping to discover new people, and it turns to a similar video flow to the For You page once you follow somebody. For You is the default page, it plays videos that may interest you according to their algorithms. Users swipe up and down to change videos, and the video will automatically loop if there is no operation. As the major part in TikTok, the For You page creates an immersive experience of short video watching, users don’t have to make many choices in the process. TikTok lets users answer questions about their interest in their Onboarding process, then they study your preference in your watching. In Comments, the comments which got likes or replies from the video creator show on the top. This could encourage interactions between the audience and the creator.
When press and hold for about 1 second on the video, a pop-up window appears. But as usual, the functions which be put in the long-press interaction are infrequently used, it’s not intuitive for users to long-press when finding “Add To Favorite” and “Not Interested” buttons.
The Discover page is composed of a search bar, horizontal scrolling banners, and one-second-long thumbnail videos organized by hashtags. The contents of the banners are usually events, promotions, and sponsorships. The remaining time of the banners on this page can be relatively short, as users usually scroll down in searching for videos. These banners may not have high priority, as they are not the main method of making profits of TikTok. Users can swipe left to view more thumbnail videos under a hashtag, and the hashtag video page will expand if you swipe to the far right.
When using Search, TikTok is applying a fuzzy comprehensive search on various categories: Top, Users, Videos, Sounds, and Hashtags. The Top tab is a mix of all the others, TikTok also tries to determine the category of the input word, gives priority to that category in the Top tab. The design of the search page may be based on an assumption that the user is interested in all kinds of contents related to the keyword.
The setting of putting Inbox in the tabs shows how TikTok emphasizes its sociability. However, the need of using inbox can be very low for some users who just watch videos.
From Audiences to Content Creators
1. CTA button
TikTok has done a lot to encourage more audiences to become video creators. In the first place, there is a call-to-action button in the middle of the tab bar of a new video recording. When new user changes to the Me page, a bubble shows in the bottom reminding you to tap it to create a new video.
2. Duet function
The Duet function in the Share page allows users to create content featuring an initial video, with both videos appearing side by side on screen in a square format. This means that people can effectively reply to video content with their own videos — which then can be shared publicly.
2. Sounds
Users can get easy access to Sounds as the background music for their videos. Unlike music apps, there is no playlist of different songs. Instead, there are collections of videos using the same sound, and this feature has made many songs popular. TikTok provides templates of making slideshows by photos, the video editing is also smooth and easy to use.
TikTok vs Douyin(Chinese TikTok)
Owned by the same company and with their similar structure/UI features, TikTok is usually viewed as an English version of Douyin, although they run on separate servers to comply with Chinese censorship restriction. In fact, TikTok and Douyin are operated by different teams of their local people, and there are several differences between them worth mentioning.
- UI system. Their icons are different, and there are also slight differences between their logos.
2. Usage of Dark Mode. The Home page of both TikTok and Douyin is in dark mode. However, all other pages in TikTok are in light mode, while Douyin keeps all pages in dark mode. The Live button is shown on the Home page only in Douyin.
3. The discover page: Discover vs Nearby. In TikTok, there is a Discover page showing trending topics, while the tab corresponding to it in Douyin is Nearby，which is also a tab in Kuaishou. The Discover page is organized with hashtags. As hashtags are widely used in Instagram and Twitter, TikTok’s using of hashtags can be viewed as an approach of localization and reducing user’s learning boundaries.
4. Search page: tags, recommended tags and video layout. The Search page is put on the Home page of Douyin, while it’s put in the Discover Page in TikTok. When you enter the Search page in TikTok, only search history show here. But in Douyin, there are “You may like”, “Trending”, “Celebrity Rank”, “LIVE” and “More” tabs under the search history, and that format is pretty similar to a popular Chinese microblogging application, Weibo. Similar to TikTok, Douyin also uses a comprehensive search and provides various tags of content categories. They both have a General tag, which is named Top in TikTok, and the tags of Users, Videos, Sounds and Hashtags. Douyin has special tags of Locations and Carts, the later one shows products users can buy from electronic business platforms like Taobao. The brief intro, location, comment numbers and the share button are showed together with the video in Douyin’s searching result page, while this page of TikTok is in a waterfall flow with limited information besides the video itself.
5. Profile page design style. The Profile page is also revealing the different design styles influenced by their local trending. The page of TikTok lefts more blank, while in Douyin it was stuffed with more information.
Douyin(Chinese TikTok) vs Kuaishou
Through its full-screen scrolling display, we watch what Douyin suggest for us, while we can choose what to watch in Kuaishou with its waterfall flow. Because of its full-screen display, creators in Douyin don’t need to write large titles to attract users’ attention, instead they tend to polish their videos better. Providing a video overview page may not be a good option for Douyin as well, as it may reduce the accuracy of the algorithm if data that reflects user preferences is reduced.
The waterfall flow experience depends a lot on the quality of its videos and thumbnails, the rougher user-created content in Kuaishou makes its visual effect not as good as Douyin. The video duration limitation on Kuaishou is longer, it has a progress bar while Douyin doesn’t.
While their audience overlaps to some extent, the characteristics of their content are very different. Douyin is promoting high-quality videos with music and storytelling, while Kuaishou pays more attention to the personal branding of creators, building a good relationship between the creator and his/her followers, which leads to a higher user stickiness. This results from their different visions, as Douyin has a slogan of “Record a good life”, while Kuaishou says “Record world, record you”.
Take-aways
TikTok teaches us how to build immersive experience on mobile platforms. There are several tricks: full-screen flow, fewer choices needed to be made, and the sound/music. In TikTok’s full-screen flow, the time is hidden just like most games do, time is killed easily in such an environment. Furthermore, TikTok makes content choices for its users instead of letting them choose. Although this behavior can be controversial, it improves user experience as it fits the theory of Hick’s Law (about the relationship between the time takes to make a decision and the number of choices).
The gesture interaction design of TikTok is also worths learning. Gesture interaction is usually complex to design, as we need to comply with user habits while designing gestures according to the workflow. TikTok successes in applying intuitive gestures. There are so many gesture interactions accessible just on the For You page: swipe horizontally, swipe vertically, click, double-click and long-press, but they didn’t make users confused. As a special feature, a double-click for “Like” is easy to memory, and it’s also emphasized by many video makers.
What’s Next for TikTok？
The aspects of TikTok could look for development from our perspective.
- Improve user stickiness. The user stickiness of TikTok is not as high as Kuaishou’s, and as both video platforms which emphasizes the quality of content, the user stickiness of Bilibili is much higher than TikTok. Both Kuaishou and Bilibili won user stickiness by help building personal branding for video creators, and that maybe one thing TikTok could look into.
- Attract a wider range of group audiences. The main audiences of TikTok are very young, and it could consider expanding its business map for attracting more older audiences. Xigua Video has attracted many elderly people and formed a unique competitive advantage in China, we may balance the features of TikTok and Xigua Video to create an experience friendly to wider range group audiences.
- Design for turning more audience to content creators. Although many measures have been taken yet to attract video making, there is still a mental obstacle for users who have never make a video. The Duet function is hidden in Share now, TikTok may bring it to a shallower lever to promote its usage. The current templates are only for images, maybe we can come up with some video templates for beginners to help them create their first video. Also, simple tutorials and onboardings for video creators can be helpful.
Next time, we will be studying Headspace, the app that provides resources of meditation, mindfulness and sleep. We want to explore how they approach the idea of mental health and meditation in terms of user experience and visual design. We will also look at the persuasive techniques the app used.
Thanks for reading! We will appreciate if you leave your thoughts in the comment!
