Blended Sense Internal Event Scheduling
Project Brief: Redesign the current event scheduling tool and build a whole new experience that is catered to directing and organizing the creative professional when they are executing a production shoot.
Role: I was the Head Product Designer for the project in charge of research and design. Our team consisted of a Design Lead, Graphic Designer, and over seas development team.
Team: Myself, Patrick Ramos, Masha Ploshchadina
The Company
A New Kind of Production
Blended Sense is a subscription based service company, where all the pre and post media production happens on a platform, including the matching of creatives run by an internal producer, who acts as the creative liaison between the small business owner and the network of curated creative professionals.
Useful Brand Terms:
Creative - A person who is creative, such as a photographer, videographer, and or talent.
Sweep - A production shoot, with your matched creative team, where all content is created and captured.
Problem Areas
1
Communicating the agenda for production sets
From when a creative accepts a sweep invitation, to when they arrive on set, there is no way for them to know what the schedule is going to be. This gives the content producer more work by trying to communicate everything day of, making sweeps to be unorganized and less efficient.
2
Equipment list for every shot type
Every production set has certain type of shot that needs to be captured. Currently, there is not a way for creatives to know what equipment is needed for each different type of shot.
3
Product not aligned with current business practices
With Blended Sense being a start up company, business practices change frequently. The event scheduling feature is missing context that content producers need communicated to all the different stakeholders involved in creating a production set.
The Approach
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Research
I sat down with two Production Managers to gather information about how a production set is run, what shot types we offer our customers today, and what practices we want to implement into the product.
Insights & Key Takeaways:
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A certain type of shot is referred to by the production team as a "sweep block".
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The team has a list of sweep blocks and what equipment, settings, and time each block needs.
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Content Producers need to be able to list out multiple locations when scheduling an event, rather than only one.
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There is no area when creating an event to input links to other resources the Content Producer wants to present to the creative.
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Rather than receiving captured footage through a MASV email link sent to creatives manually, Content Producers would prefer creatives to be able to upload from the platform.
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Creatives need to receive email and text notifications before and after that reminds them about important information.
Ideation
With this information, I was able to start planning what the user flow should look like for the Content Producer and Creative.
I created a swim lane user flow to help show how Creatives, Content Producers, and the user interface all interact with each other before, during, and after a sweep. With so many moving parts, it was detrimental to see all of the steps together. Working with the production team and leadership I was able to receive feedback, ask more questions, and make sure everyone was on the same page about how we wanted the scheduling feature to operate.
Once the user flow was finalized, I started creating wireframes of what all of the different users screens would look like, what permissions each user would have, if there were any additional screens needed, and what options would populate under every drop down.
The sweep blocks experience needed to be as flexible as possible. Creating an admin space where the user can add, remove and modify sweep blocks was principal when creating the layout.
Design
After finalizing wireframes with leadership and stakeholders, I went straight into designing using the design system that the team and I have been building over the past six months. Here were the results:
Content Producer Screens
Within a business, a Content Producer can now see a sweep while its happening in real time, upcoming sweeps, and once it has past.
Content Producer now has the ability to create sweeps from the businesses page.
When a sweep event is clicked, a Content Producer can see all relevant information about the event, a timeline of what will be captured, and the team producing the media assets.
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Ability to add relevant links to sweep events to help add context for the shot styling and run through events.
A time line showing what is going to get captured and for how long.
A team section that shows who has accepted a sweep and pending invitations.
With the sweep creation process now seamless, Content Producers are able to create an agenda for any production by being able to input how much equipment is needed for any sweep block, add descriptions, and add multiple locations to any sweep.
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Admin Screens
The admin user is able to create/edit sweep blocks and add or remove the selection of details within the sweep block. This ability gives the admin complete flexibility to creating sweep blocks that are beneficial for setting the sweep timeline.
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Development
After completing designs the next steps are to pass off everything to the development team and hold a meeting to go over the design decisions made.
Many of the decisions made for this feature have been based on the insights we gathered through our user interviews in the research stage of this project. Next step would be to run user tests and validate the user experience choices that we have made.
Takeaways
I learned a lot about working with constrains and having limited time to complete a deadline. The project deadline was shortened due to certain circumstances and forced me to prioritize certain requirements over others based off of the needs of the users. Working as a solo designer has also shown me the value of communication between all stakeholders involved, especially when the concept is new.