An AI powered YouTube research tool built for creators
My Role
Product designer - Majorily worked on channel videolytics, Search homepage & Outline docs
Team & Timeline
April 2024 - October 2024
Overview - A quick TLDR;)
Zero1 Creator Studio helps creators understand what's working on YouTube, so they can make better content decisions before they hit record.
This project started from a simple observation that most creators in the Zero1 by Zerodha network were following a same workflow every week.
Track competitors uploads
Open YouTube -> screenshot video thumbnails -> note competitors view counts -> paste it in a sheet -> try to spot patterns (what worked and what didn't)
Repurpose a competitors video
Through gut feeling creator decides the topic ->Does research (from News/web articles/even competitors videos on YouTube) -> Drafts a story outline doc -> Sketches story board -> Shoots video -> Track performance -> A/B test with thumbnail and Title for video on YouTube
The process was slow and manual. While creators could repeat it every week, there was no tool to automate it as part of their video creation workflow. Most video ideas were driven by gut feeling rather than data, making it difficult to know what to create to maximise views and engagement.
Quick product walkthrough
These are actual product recordings. Tool was designed and developed quickly to make it easy to use and had intelligence layer of OpenAi API for quick analysis.
Search homepage
Collections
A bookmark for all the videos that you search through keywords for video research, thumbnail analysis or title.
Design and development was quick as we used RadixUI design system and component library with Cursor for quick code implementation and used streamlit with claude code for quick POC.
Collection analysis
User can analyse and find hidden insight from the videos through comments, video transcripts and using Ai to to further distill his finds.
Channel & video analytics
A place to track the performance of the video with VPH (views per hour) , Engagement rate, Thumbnail modifications & Title changes that were done by the competitors channel.
Video transcript analysis
Deep research of a video through Ai using Angle bot and find repetition of most used phrases or retention peaks that keeps the video engaged throughout.
OUTcome
Zero1 Creator Studio is live and actively used by the internal team at Zerodha's Zero1 network. Creators use it daily to guide content strategy, benchmark comparable channels, and identify high-performing video formats before filming begins.
8%
14%
-39%
THE Problem — UX case study in Deets ;)
Creators spent significant time manually researching YouTube and comparing competitor videos, but lacked a simple way to turn this data into clear, actionable insights for deciding what to create next.
Conversations with early-stage and growing YouTube creators revealed a common pattern across video research. Everyone was manually checking competitor channels particularly noting down upload frequency, view counts, saving thumbnails and none of it felt like they had a real picture of what was working in their niche.
The research existed, but it was scattered and exhausting.
Pain points
Hard to know what’s actually working
Creators had no simple way to spot high-performing videos and understand which topics or formats resonated with their audience.
The research workflow is scatered
Creators switched between YouTube Studio, spreadsheets, and multiple browser tabs to track what competitors are uploading
market research
Existing tools either serve enterprise media teams or treat YouTube as just another social channel.
Nothing was designed for the specific thing creators actually do before filming.
Channel stats, subscriber tracking,
growth comparison
Deeper content insights, topic ideation,
thumbnail analysis
Keyword research, SEO, channel audits,
competitor tracking
Strategic content decisions, audience
behaviour, detailed format analysis
Other social Media management tools
Tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social offer broad social media scheduling and basic analytics. They treat YouTube as one channel among many rather than a primary platform, and lack the video-level depth as retention curves, outlier detection, thumbnail analysis that creators require.
HOW Might we
Understanding creators
Conducted extensive research to understand workflow
For a week, I did exactly what the creators were doing. Started tracking five to six channels, noted their upload schedule, saved thumbnails, tried to figure out which formats were getting views & engagement. Entering all data into sheet and document. Soon I'd miss a video, lose track of when something was uploaded as there were many videos and shorts. This manual research loop was tedious, error-prone, and fundamentally unscalable.
Started using tools that are available such as YouTube creator studio to find video drop-offs, understand how to use it for keeping audience hooked for longer watch time. And sooner I got to know that this information exists, but there's no structure around it for creators to find useful insights.
YouTube Data API v3
Discovered that we can pull channel and video level stats like views, subscribers, likes, comments for free but with limited API keys.
Design Process
Creators already know how to browse a feed, click into a video & scan comments and extract transcripts. So introducing a newer interface will increase time for to teach how to use and they won't navigate that easily. We just needed to give their existing mental model a research & intelligence layer.
Homepage
Discovered that we can pull channel and video level stats including views, subscribers, likes, comments, and video counts, enabling data-driven content analysis
Key Changes to the Navigation after introducing AI search layer
As we went ahead and shifted our focus on feed that doesn't only have keyword search approch. that could use Ai in video search. Implemented a copilot type search experience for the user
Collections
Collections became the backbone of the research workflow. You search, you find relevant videos from different creators, you drop them into a collection. Inside that collection, you can see comments, transcripts, peak retention moments, and engagement breakdowns. It's basically a research dossier that a writer can sit with before they start scripting.
Videolytics - Short for video analytics
Collections became the backbone of the research workflow. You search, you find relevant videos from different creators, you drop them into a collection. Inside that collection, you can see comments, transcripts, peak retention moments, and engagement breakdowns. It's basically a research dossier that a writer can sit with before they start scripting.
Channelytics
Collections became the backbone of the research workflow. You search, you find relevant videos from different creators, you drop them into a collection. Inside that collection, you can see comments, transcripts, peak retention moments, and engagement breakdowns. It's basically a research dossier that a writer can sit with before they start scripting.
Outline docs - writer's tool
Collections became the backbone of the research workflow. You search, you find relevant videos from different creators, you drop them into a collection. Inside that collection, you can see comments, transcripts, peak retention moments, and engagement breakdowns. It's basically a research dossier that a writer can sit with before they start scripting.
TAKEAWAY
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