Reeltime
Project
Overview
The chance to attend loved ones’ important events in life had been much limited and denied due to the spread of pandemics. Countless weddings, baby showers, birthday celebrations, funerals, and other types of events had been forced to be canceled, and not being able to receive blessings from the closest friend and family members had caused lots of regrets. The purpose of the Reeltime app is to provide a platform that will enable users to share the most genuine reaction and response back to their loved ones after viewing the events.
Design
Challenges
Design a mobile app to record recipients’ live reactions when viewing the streamed events and be able to smoothly reply to event hosts with their recordings of instant live reactions or greeting messages, instead of just alike or text message.
Research, synthesize and identify the best message recording methods that will record the most genuine blessing from the user while don’t cause any difficulties or hardship during use.
Explore, test, and design the best final delivery format of the reaction recordings or greeting messages.
Select and implement novice level yet essential video editing functions for quick recording editing.
My Role
User research, information architecture, wireframe, prototypes, usability testing, and visual design.
Research
Competitor Research
I deep-dived into the most famous social networking apps that offer video sharing as the main sharing medium, such as Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook. Steps of how to record, edit, and share video clips were mapped out in detail in order to study their user flow, highlights, and pain points.
I also looked into the video editing features particularly from these apps and also some other mobile editing apps to find what editing features are must-have, good-to-have, or nice-to-have in order to enhance user experience.
Takeaways
Popular videos are mostly short and sweet. The most desired time of a story-type video on a platform like Youtube is 1 to 2 minutes and short clips best fall between 9 to 15 seconds on a platform like Tik Tok.
The filters are a must-have for any video-sharing app now. Color grading, special effects, text effects, etc. The simpler to use the better. Creating new, fun, and unexpected filter effects are becoming a key deciding element for users.
Survey
In a survey with 487 completed participants, we found out that close to 50% of the users still prefer to reply with in-person responses to demonstrate sincerity and genuine. It can be a face-to-face meeting, voice call, or video call, at least some form of connection that was conducted live and person to person.
Project Scope
Results from competitor research done on 12 industry-leading video editing and social media apps in the market; 487 completed surveys; and 6 user interviews had been carefully synthesized and categorized into different feature sections. Features in each section are prioritized after cross-checking with the client and the developer on the level of effort and the expected developing timeline of the project.
User Flow
Designing the user flow of sending, receiving, replying, editing, and sharing the video clip was developed based on the research result.
Low Fidelity
Wireframe
Exploring different layout designs and component position arrangements for both iOS and Android platforms.
High-Fidelity
Wireframe
High fidelity wireframe designed base on validated design concept and synthesized research results.
Concept Validation
Reply Recording Methods
Two reaction recording concept prototypes were built for concept validation testing.
From 26 total testing users,
19 testing users prefer Concept A for the genuine, the uncandid reaction, and the element of surprise.
4 testing users prefer Concept B as they can wish to construct a formal greeting and blessing.
3 testing users can go either concept.
Video Production Methods
Two concepts of how to make the final video format were tested. Concept A is to add selected reaction clips to the main video so future viewers can be more immersed in the video because they will know where the reactions are coming from. Another is adding the reply clips to the end of the leading video to make a sequence.
From 26 total testing users,
17 testing users favor Concept A due to the one-shot only, no re-do recording of the first possible reaction that they will have. It felt new, fun, and engaging. No matter whether it’s good or bad, it will be genuine.
Six testing users favor Concept B because they can be more prepared to record the reply, which means more sincerity.
Three testing users can go either way and like to have the option to choose between the two concepts.
Design Exploration
This is the main screen where users can manage their videos invitations, replies, collages, and shared posts. The design process started from a more traditional layout of the navigation bar and a balanced displacement of video thumbnail and info, then developed toward a thumbnail heavy layout with displaying essential info only and a focused call-to-action button.
Different color palates and button design layouts were explored for a fun, friendly, but trendy feel. We started with a neutral color tone, then went bold, then tone back to a balanced haze color palate composted with soothing blue and magenta. Solid button design is used for main button design to emphasize the primary importance of visual hierarchy.
