User Centered Design

When i first looked into user centered design I think I missed some key points and failed to fully understand the differences of it in comparison to SCAMPER. To help with this I did some research on UCD.

http://www.webcredible.com/blog-reports/web-usability/user-centered-design.shtml

"User-centered design (UCD) is a project approach that puts the intended users of a site at the centre of its design and development. It does this by talking directly to the user at key points in the project to make sure the site will deliver upon their requirements."

This is something I will need to do with my project that will likely be aimed at businesses looking to create video content for the purpose of marketing. Ideally I would like to consult with someone within marketing to get their opinion on video and it's role withing marketing online.

"ISO 13407 outlines four essential activities in a user-centered design project:

• Requirements gathering - Understanding and specifying the context of use
• Requirements specification - Specifying the user and organisational requirements
• Design - Producing designs and prototypes
• Evaluation - Carrying out user-based assessment of the site"

Looking at these descriptions on what is required for UCD, it is clear to me that creating prototypes may be key, and getting feedback from my client but also from other people can only help form an opinion on the final product.

I think it will be important to specify the organisations requirements, which for this project will more than likely be to create online video that helps market a company or a product and give them an identity online through the medium of video.

SCAMPER

In this blog I wanted to talk about the SCAMPER design method. Scamper is probably my favored design method with User Centered Design also being a preferred method of mine.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_02.htm

"You use the tool by asking questions about existing products, using each of the seven prompts above. 

These questions help you come up with creative ideas for developing new products, 

and for improving current ones."

For me I think this is a very natural design process as it applies itself to video editing very well. I think when you edit video it is a constant rethinking process of if this working, do I need to move clips around, do I need to adapt or change them or simply remove them.

Ultimately editing is a removal process, I often think of editing large pieces of video with lots of clips as removing 95% of the bad or not so good footage, just to get to that important 5% that is really key to creating the video.

I think it is easy to become hung up on potential videos that may or may not work with the edit, and it’s simply better to make a decision, leave it and then revisit it applying many of the points of SCAMPER and refining down an idea until it is the best it can be.

This will be important for my client project because I will need to refine down the video to be short but get all of the messages required across in the video.

Planning

In our previous group based project in my evaluation I touched on the planning aspect of the project and more specifically how I felt like I could have had more of an input with the group for planning and started the project planning earlier with the group.

I wanted to start the planning for the client project as soon as possible so initially planned out the idea of creating a promotional video and did some research to accompany this. Although the idea to create a promotional video was received as a good idea, the idea to instead take over the production on a video VPoint TV would be making for a client was put forward.

After discussing this idea and taking time to consider the different projects available for me to do, we decided against doing this for a couple of reasons. The videos required would not fit within the time frame of our course, many would have started too late but then also finished far short of the final hand in date. Also because of the difficulties find a suitable client who would allow me to take control over and entire project it was decided to work more on the original idea of a promotional video.

As mentioned in my previous blog I sat down and had a long discussion with Ian and Sally (of VPoint TV) about how I could still create a video that would promote them and be to of a good standard they would happily use on the website. After the discussion we decided to create a video that centered on showing potential clients how VPoint TV is different and how they can help Humanise Brands. 

The only issue I had was this put me behind on creating ideas for the new video, although the majority of the research i had done previously for the first promotional video still applied to the style and idea of the new one.

Previous video influence

Whilst working at VPoint TV I edited two videos in the past three months with a similar style to the Haircut Nationwide film by Stalker Films.

These two videos were both videos for Hillarys, the first was a video about Monochrome:

And the second more recently a video about valentines, with a 50 shades of grey loose connection:

Both of these videos employ the same style of video by using a voice over, music and various clips of stock (or footage we filmed) along with Hillarys product shots to tell a story whilst showing the viewer a product.

This is the style I would like to use for the client project video I am working on, however I would like the video I'm making to be faster paced and potentially shorter.

Brief

After a meeting with Ian at VPoint we discussed ideas for the video project and what it needed to achieve. Initially I was told they needed to create a promotional video that wasn’t so obviously just a typical promotional video.

After the meeting recently we outlined this further with the idea of creating a short video that will be used as the main video on the VPoint website, this will promote the company but more importantly clearly outline what the company does for other brands and companies.

The core idea is ‘Humanising Brands’ and how the company does that for the brands it works with. A key word is ‘Irreverent’, not being disrespectful but to approach videos in a way as not to treat the audience as stupid, or at least passive. Audiences are clever, and they know when they are being sold to, so creating very blatant advertisements or videos that are aimed at promoting a brand in a very obvious way is no longer a way of getting a good response from the audience, or in fact getting the audience themselves to talk about or share the video after watching. In an age of social media where brands can “go viral” with a successful campaign largely down to an audiences response and sharing of these videos, it’s important to communicate to companies wanting videos that going about things in a more traditional way simply won’t work, especially online.

Another key point is creating something that works but also looks simple to make can often take a lot of work and preparation. A good example of this is one of my research videos for ‘dollarshaveclub’, which a lot of other brands probably see as a simple video they should be able to create for a small budget, when in fact a video like that in far harder to create than a tradition advertisement or promotional video.

An interesting point to make about the video I need to create, is that the video also needs to adhere to the research and points I’ve made about what the video itself is trying to convey. So that it is more ‘irreverent’ or ‘tongue in cheek’ about the idea of being more ‘irreverent’ or ‘tongue in cheek’.

An example of a video Ian raised as being of this style is and award winning video called ‘Haircut’ by Straker Films, a promotional video for Nationwide.

http://www.evcom.org.uk/showcase/haircut-3/

Of course the video needs to get communicate that the company has the technical ability to create something that is shot, edited and sounds great to a high standard, but the core idea and how the message comes across is key, and ultimately the technical aspects can be great, but all for nothing without a good idea.

So all I need to do now is create a great idea for this video promoting how important it is to have a great idea, simple.

Initial Idea

My initial idea is to produce a promotional video for VPoint TV, a company i currently work for part time. Keeping the video limited to 1:30 to keep the viewer engaged. The reason I am doing this is because the current promo is outdated and I think a new one with the current staff is needed.

For my presentation I looked at 5 Relevant sources for this project:

1. http://www.vpoint.tv/portfolio/youtube/ VPoints current promotional video that is outdated

2. http://fatfreemedia.co.uk/ FatFreeMedia another Nottingham Based video companies promotional video, quite a slick promo/showreel that shows the company is current and capable of making good videos.

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI#t=19 An international source dollarshaveclub was an interesting one to research because of the behind the scenes nature of the video managed to capture the attention of millions of viewers, along with it’s comedy elements.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcIN15WqeRE Keeping on the behind the scenes research, whilst the previous video was more of a mock up behind the scenes, these actual behind the scenes from Peter Jackson show how much work goes into a production and how this could be reflected in VPoints video.

5. http://connect.avid.com/2013-Morgan-Spurlock-Webinar.html An interesting behind the scenes (but very long) video of Morgan Spurlocks video company, who produce movies like the One Direction Movie, something you don’t expect having previously seen Morgans own more down to earth documentary films.