YouTube Video Editing
Social Collaboration Platform
Collaborate with YouTube
through a social platform
Overview
The Problem
YouTube does not have the ability or functionality for group collaborative projects. There are opportunities for collaboration or socialization on the site, but there is no true collaboration functionality.
Our Solution
We designed a video editing collaboration system for YouTube that would help YouTubers, students, video editors, or just hobbyists that enjoy video editing to edit a video simultaneously and posting their videos to YouTube.
My Role
Performing user research, Brainstorming, Sketching, Prototyping, UI Design, Wire-framing, Visual Design, User Testing
Design Process
Research
User Research and Interviews
YouTube is a large video sharing website that offers users the ability to watch, upload, download, share videos, and even live-stream to audiences on the site and has several users over the world, and so we decided to identify the existing issues faced by users while accessing interface and their thoughts on the lacking a true social collaboration function entirely. We conducted contextual interviews with six users to determine the possibilities and constraints of the product and organized the data to reflect the user purpose significant.
Insights
Persona
We created Personas to represent a user group who face similar problems. This gave us a clear picture of the user’s needs and what they would like to have in the application.
Ideation
Brainstorming
From the insights above we did some brainstorming to understand the
important features that could be included in the final iteration of the design to
meet user needs.
User Journey
Design
Low-Fidelity Prototype
We designed very quick paper prototypes to gain additional insight into what the overall functionality of our prototype would be.
Below are examples of the rapid sketches that we designed for our low-fidelity prototype.
User Testing
We performed 10 usability tests with students on low-fidelity prototype within our university. Our usability tests generated many ideas for how we could better improve our current prototype. These recommendations were:
- Add more colors
- Ability to import media at any time
- Add audio editing tools
- Saving projects to your computer
- Possibly adding “Viewports” like Essentials, Animation, Motion Graphics, etc.
- Add Cosmetic fixes like hover pop-ups with names of features for clarity (icons, tools, etc.)
- Add user icons/pictures
- Add tutorials
- Project separation between collaborators so that they could render only their own part of the video, rather than the whole video, etc.
Overall, users were very impressed by our prototype, as well as the concept of a collaborative video editing platform.
High Fidelity Prototype
Home Screen
Once the user visits the homepage, they will
be able to click on the collaboration icon
on the top right side to access the
collaboration tools and editing functions
available on YouTube.
New Project Screen
The new project screen gets displayed when we click on the collaborator button. We can add collaborators using the new project screen. Also, the projects name and the description can be added.
Invite Collaborators
Users could add other collaborators using this screen. They could add as many collaborators
as they liked by clicking the green “+” sign next
to their corresponding email addresses. After they have selected the collaborators they desired, they selected “Finish”.
Import Media Screen
After users have clicked the collaboration icon (on the top right side), they will see this main screen where they can create a new project
and add media to work on together. At the bottom is a timeframe with each color depicting different person and their part
in the project.
Main Functionalities
Users were assigned colors that differentiated themselves from other collaborators, similar
to Google Docs. In this screen, the main user is blue, Marie3 is pink, and JohnDoe2 is blue.
What they are currently viewing/working on is represented by the location of their vertical line on the video time-bar.
Render
The render pop up window gets displayed when the user clicks on the render button. It offers the users the ability to check the video once the video is complete. The render window provides the final view of the
complete video.
Publish
This publish screen offered users the ability to publish their video directly to YouTube. It gave success messages to ensure the user knew
that their video was published, as well as let
them share their video on other social sites.
Lessons learned and Conclusion
During our evaluations, it was common for users to comment on how they enjoyed the concept of being able to simultaneously collaborate on a video project with others. They also commented on how they would have used a platform such as this if it were actually launched within YouTube, as it gave them the ability to edit videos with others and see what those other individuals were doing concurrently.
One social theory that we can attribute to this fact is the theory discussed with socially translucent CSCW systems. Visibility, awareness, and accountability were all very important topics discussed during our lecture on CSCW systems. It would make sense for users to be drawn to a product that has all three of those attributes, such as a
- Collaboration system similar to our prototype, due to the fact that users are able to hold other contributors accountable for their actions/edits throughout the collaboration process.
- In our prototype, users have the ability to see each and every edit (timestamped) made by other collaborators, similar to the functionality found within Google Docs, which incorporates the socially translucent systems theory into our functioning prototype.
Next Steps
In future iterations, we would like to implement additional features we could not include due to time constraints as recommended by the participants during user testing.