Marpidi Mobile App Design
Marpidi is a Web and Mobile platform for viewing & making short films and web series. It is a collaborating hub for all directors, technicians, actors and everyone involved with film making. There are many people with immense talent and passion for movie making. Marpidi was born to bring all people that share such passion and provide a chance to showcase their work.
The startup's primary goal was to bring everyone together, share knowledge and help them make
great creative films. Another key goal was to show the appropriate content from these creators
to the audience.
Humans impacted 🏆: 20+ (Product pre-launch numbers)
MY ROLE
User research, product design, information architecture,
visuals, user flows, prototyping,
user testing
MY TOOLS
APPROACH
I started my analysis by understanding the goals and full product suite of Marpidi. Next, I identified the key design challenges based of the products we are providing and how best they can be solved in a iterative process.
"Should different user types have different login process or the same?"
"Which features can be combined for a better experience?"
"How important is a user's event history for them?"
"Is it useful or counter-productive to show recommended videos?"
DESIGN CHALLENGES
Theme
Designs were made keeping the ideology, theme of colors intact. Incorporating the designs by not deviating from the ideology concept of Marpidi was little challenging as we need to keep both Viewers and Movie users perspective in mind.
Content division
Sub-categorizing the product suite into web series, short film and production team depending on the content of the film and taking different surveys for each user base.
Interaction
The UI design needs to be simple because though the majority of target audience is young users, the experienced and influential people in the industry are not tech savvy and needed easy to understand interfaces.
RESEARCH
To better understand our problem space, we approached aspiring movie makers and experienced technicians. After our interactions with different professionals from the film industry, we learned that the target audience can be divided into three main categories. To back our user classification, we have further decided to conduct a survey for the whole target audience with a series of questions asking their tasks as part of their job, how they title themselves, etc. We collected all the data and picked the common keywords, read the survey results in depth to understand how they would best fit into the classification. We finally ended up grouping people into the below categories.
TYPES OF USERS
Viewers
Users who view
the short films or web series on Marpidi.
Film Maker
Users who initiate, plan, produce
& hold the film copyrights.
Short Film Crew
Users hired by the film makers to be the part of their film.
USER INTERVIEWS
"Whom do you work with the most during your job ?"
"How many sub-ordinates do you have and what are their job titles ?"
"What are your main responsibilities as a production house owner ?"
"How many technicians do you usually need to complete a small film project ?"
It was challenging to conduct a survey for technicians and production team because they were a little hard to find over the internet in large numbers. I have decided that the best course of action to get the accurate results is by interviewing them in person and finding out the details that could back the user classification and all other features that can be incorporated in the design.
We re-visited multiple dance, film & recording studios to conduct interviews in order to enhance the design based on the feedback received. We showed our prototypes, collected their thinking process, modified the design when required for better user interaction. We also gathered data from the studios regarding their customers, challenges, etc. which we thought would be helpful in our iterative design process.
"Who visited your studios most often ?"
"Where would you go to add a new film ?"
"How would you navigate to the new project planning page ?"
"What are your main challenges when trying to find new talent ?"
USER SITEMAPS
Based of the research results we have outlined the mobile design by categorizing each elements. Defining the structure through sitemaps helped us to visualize the navigation process the user takes. We identified the common features between all three types of users and added the target audience specific features on top of the common ones to maintain an organized hierarchy and design flow.
Viewer Sitemap
Film Maker Sitemap
Film Crew Sitemap
DESIGN
After the initial round one of our research, we created the below low fidelity wireframes. We decided creating low fidelity wireframes in the beginning as high fidelity wireframes takes more time to design and may waste time on deciding the visual designs like font, colour, gradient etc and are not productive for a fast paced work environment. Where as the Lo-Fi designs are fast to product, depict the functionality of the app and easy to correct, enhance and re-iterate when required.
"Wireframes provide
a visual feedback
and
are fast to depict
the functionality."
Navigation for different users
The navigation for three user types is designed such that the layout and structure is standard for everyone. The differences are only the availability of the features to the user types. We restricted visibility and access to the pages that do not fall under the scope of that user's requirement.
👈 Film Crew
The Film Crew would have access to everything a viewer has and in addition to that he has unique access to the Hub for social interaction between all crew members on Marpidi. He also has access to the Projects to lookup and express his interest.
Film Maker 👉
The Film Maker has all access as a viewer does and on top of that he has access to the projects with additional privileges where-in he can create and manage his projects. He also has access to the Production House with additional permissions to Manage his own production and all the films under it.
👈 Viewer
The Viewer has access to all the short films, web series, production houses and general account management pages.
Few more screen designs
Signup | Initial screen
Signup | Country selection
Signup | Account selection
Home | Welcome pop-up
Home | Web Series
Home | Short Films
👈 Short Film viewing page
I designed the page such that the viewing experience is not spoiled by overlapping control icons on the video screen. Videos from the same production will be shown below and can be scrolled through horizontally. Based on the feedback of the users we designed it to display minimum information related to the video and if needed they could navigate to the full details by simply clicking the info icon.
The icons below the video change dynamically based on the users selection. For example, as soon as the video starts playing, the play icon would change to a pause icon, so that the user can click it to pause the video.
Home Screen Interactions
USER TESTING
User testing was separately done for three target audiences as the user flow varies. We have created separate list of tasks that meets the needs and requirement of the target audience.
Goal of the task:Our goal of the tasks is to make the target audience interact seamlessly with ease and clearly understand the displayed information without any fuss.
User Testing task for Viewers:- Task-1: To search a short film/ web series that belongs to a specific production house.
- Task-2: To create a wish list with the users favourite short films/web series.
- Task-3: To create a notification bell for any upcoming short film/web series of a particular production house or film crew.
- Task-4: To discover a series of web series from the production house.
- Task-1: To search a short film/ web series that belongs to a specific production house.
- Task-2: To create a wish list with the users favourite short films/web series.
- Task-3: To create a notification bell for any upcoming short film/web series of a particular production house or film crew.
- Task-4: To discover a series of web series from the production house.
- Task-5: To accept an offer from the production house/director/designated person before starting the project
- Task-6: To message other film crew either same or different project under Hub option.
- Task-1: To search a short film/ web series that belongs to a specific production house.
- Task-2: To create a wish list with the users favourite short films/web series.
- Task-3: To create a notification bell for any upcoming short film/web series of a particular production house or film crew.
- Task-4: To discover a series of web series from the production house.
- Task-5: To send an offer for the film crew members to start a project.
- Task-6: To update film crew details about the upcoming project.
- Task-7: To update notification information about their upcoming projects.
KEY LEARNINGS
Teamwork makes the Dream workMarpidi is a fast paced environment with fresh minds around the company. It was an immense pleasure to work with everyone of them and making our product shine.
Iterative process is the key to a successful product design:It is always easier to improve the designs, than to get it right for the first time.
Check out the Web version of Marpidi
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