Overview

Record Life is a smartphone app that lowers the entry barrier to video making for beginners by breaking down each step into short and simple daily tasks.
I worked as a user researcher and UX designer in the team of 3 UX designers, contributing to designing and conducting in-depth interview/ survey/ a diary study, and creating and testing the prototype.

Goals/ Methodologies

To help beginner video makers continue video making as a productive hobby

To define problems in current video making process & learning platforms
In-depth interview to 6 intermediate-level video makers

To find entry barrier and reasons of discontinuing
Conducting a survey to beginners to find the common entry barriers and reasons for quitting

To come up with the solution for the pain points and test the concept
Coming up with an idea meeting unmet needs of the target users and testing the idea and its UI (Prototyping/ Diary Study)

1. Explore & Define

We conducted in-depth interviews and a survey to gather insights on current video making process & learning platforms. Then we found the insights below.

6 semi-structured interviews were conducted to intermediate video makers for 15 - 30 minutes.
The interviewees were selected based on the following criteria: a) self-taught (online tutorials, playing around with) b)an amateur to intermediate-level (who have more than 120 hours of video making experience).
Questions were about: categories of videos they make, ways of learning for video making, motivations to continue making videos, video making process, and tips .

The video making process consists of Planning - Filming - Editing.
Planning was considered the most important part by video creators.

"If I can give tips for beginners, I wanna tell them to put more efforts on planning. The concept, meaning the aura and the main topic, should be clear. ” (Boyband fan video creator)

Intermediate video makers who self taught themselves used Youtube or Naver Blog to learn technical terms and how to use editing program

“When I wanted to learn a specific effect while editing a video, I googled or searched the effect on Youtube” (Boyband fan video creator)
“I searched the keyword such as ‘cool effects for After Effect’ to find sample effects, and checked other videos on the channel that give tips on how to visualise effects for a video”
(University club PR video creator)

Beginners were overwhelmed by amount of information online and jargons,
and quitted due to lack of motivation

They were interested in making Daily vlog and Travel vlog

2. Ideate

Based on the research above, our team came up with some ideas that can help users learn the whole process of film making as well as motivate them. Then we made a criteria to compare each idea. We decided to choose Record Life, as it met our criteria the best.

3. Prototype

We created an early prototype to test the concept, then we found that the idea of growing pets was not understood by users. So, we changed the concept to simpler one while keeping gamification features.

The quick usability test was taken to three UX research professionals in the class. We wanted to know if the concept and features are delivered clearly to the users.

4. Diary Study & Iteration

We conducted a Diary Study for 5 days to know how people feel about the concept, find use case, and test usability.

Participants were 4 people having no previous experience in video making. The task was to take a video everyday of the topic they chose to make a relay video.
Wizard of Oz Method was used for this test, as Record Life’s functional app was not developed. We spliced videos manually everyday from day1, and sent merged videos to participants everyday.
We utilised Google Form to received qualitative data for a diary study about uncomfortable parts in UI, degree of satisfaction, helpfulness in video making.

The result shows users got used to UI as they try, and were satisfied by the result (scored 4.0/5). Also users reported the concept of relay video was difficult to understand at first, and the word choice of 'Todays mission' was overwhelming.

Record Life

“ Why do people give up continuing productive hobbies?”