Media Content Distribution System
A one-stop-shop for film and television content owners requiring media management and multi-platform distribution
Project Overview
A web application that facilitates upstream post-production services along with downstream distribution. It consists of production, quality and delivery workflows. It is a task based application wherein, teams use it as a media content processing platform.
The goal of this project was to create a seamless user experience to facilitate smooth workflows and navigation throughout the application.
My Role
UX Designer, Amdocs
Product Thinking, User Research, Information Architecture, Interaction, Design System, Visual Design, Prototyping, and Testing
The Problem
The company wanted to increase the output deliveries of media files to fulfill the orders from major media distribution and production houses of North America.
But existing system was not user friendly and the teams used 4 applications to complete the processing of media files. Their workflows were not connected to each other which slowed down the production and output process.
So, they decided to create a new web application that would facilitate the workflows of all processes.
Jumpstarting Research
The first part of the research was to understand how they receive, process, and deliver the video content to the OTT platforms. It was instrumental in gaining a better understanding of the current system in place and allowed me to understand their work, their process and to identify the pain points they encounter on a daily basis.
Qualitative Interviews
User research was quintessential. The complex workflows of the multiple user types and their interactions with one another needed to be laid out in detail. In order to achieve that, I gathered as much as I could from the end users to understand the challenges they face and how they see the platform making a difference in optimizing pain areas.
“It takes me 4 different tools to package a single delivery for an OTT platform. I need to pull data from multiple sources to be able to complete the delivery package.”
Aaron Brown, Delivery Manager
“It’s a challenge to process content for each and every platform and then schedule those deliveries manually. Also, sending manual notifications to the client and approval team via email takes so much time.”
Samantha Mathews, Processing Technician
Persona
We consolidated and analysed the data gathered. We came up with two personas that described the workflows of users. Their stories were informed by the insights gathered from the research. They represent the target users for Nexus and guided us throughout the design phase.
Journey Map
After thorough research, we found opportunities to minimize the frustrations for the users. The solutions we came up with were in line with the mission and vision of Nexus.
Competitive Research
Identifying the Key competitors and evaluating their solutions to determine their strengths and weaknesses helped us find some opportunity areas for our product and which threats should be mitigated.
Insights
From the user interviews, stakeholder interviews, and competitive research I gained both qualitative and quantitative insights. It also helped in understanding user expectations, behaviors, needs, and motivations. We then used these Insights to ensure that all product design decisions do benefit the user.
Lack of Collaboration
• Inability to coordinate between cross-funtional teams at important stages of content development.
• Lack of visibility among team members.
Disconnectedness
• To complete each task user needs to use a different tool. This creates friction in the overall user’s journey and affects productivity.
Ideation Workshop
We ran a workshop with real-time users and stakeholders to find different solutions to solve the navigation architecture through the card sorting technique.
It was quite insightful as the users and stakeholders shared their experiences and ideas for resolving system issues.
Scoping Down
We used the agile iterative approach for the project that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches. Instead of betting everything on a “big bang” launch, we aimed to deliver work in small, but consumable, increments. With the help of my product manager, we began prioritizing on user stories with detailed tasks necessary to complete the stories in sprints.
I then began digitilizing the designs. I first shared the wireframes with the stakeholders to get early feedback and then the hi-fidelity mockups. This helped save a lot of development time.
Wireframes
We conducted several brainstorming and ideation sessions to generate the low fidelity wireframes in the design process.
Design System
I ensured visual consistency by providing detailed UI style sheet, component gallery and UX guidelines to the engineering team.
Visual Designs
I worked closely with the engineering team to oversee and sign off on visual designs before each release cycle.
User Testing
To validate our solution, we tested the prototype with existing and potentials users of Nexus. We received good feedback mostly, however, there were some fixes.
Application is pretty simple and easy to navigate — This was positive feedback. We were happy that the users found the application simple and straight-forward.
The process of task assignation needs to be automated and simple — This was an easy fix. We added the feature to assign tasks to team members where the user can add assignee, target delivery date, and put the content on queue as well.
The Workflow of movie and tv content should be different — We created separate user flows for movie and tv content because tv content includes seasons, episodes etc.
Future Considerations
Try to find the ways to automate the Metadata Ingest process to increase the productivity of production team.
Introduce dashboards for clients which shows the overall progress and total deliverable status related to their media content. The clear and meaningful language would be very crucial to get the message across.
Let's Connect
Do you want to know more about me or my work? Feel free to reach out.