Storytelling: Video Prototyping II
HCID 521 Prototyping Studio | Week 3 | Assignment
When it comes to new ideas, how you express your idea and build a great communication between audience and the idea cannot be over emphasized. Video is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate your idea and leave impression to your target audience (stakeholders, investors, or co-workers). An effective and well-curated video can be equipped with lots of information about the idea in short time(if well-curated). After our studio lecture of video prototyping, we were assigned to demonstrate our idea thru video.
REQUIREMENT
We were asked to demonstrate a product idea through video in a concise, organized, and effective way. The product can either be one of the prototypes we have done previous weeks, or a brand new product idea. Like our previous assignment, we have less than one week to complete the video.
“PAKKIT” & STORYBOARD I
First I was struggling in coming up with a great idea that I feel passionate about and which is easy to present as well. I finally came up with this idea of bag packing application. (Story of the idea is in the comment part of this paragraph.)
The basic idea of Pakkit is to provide customer price (of daily use products) at/around your travel destination, minimizing your luggage amount, and saving both your bag packing time and your travel expense.
My first storyboard was sketched down right after I came up with this idea. It demonstrated the problem scene and the possible interface. My storyboard was without any actors, just demonstrating lots of items related to travel and bag packing.
DECISION ON SHOWING INTERFACES & STORYBOARD II
The decision to switch to storyboard II was tough. Although this assignment was called “video prototyping”, I decided not to show any physical product or prototype since it was an initial idea and still not have a specific form of actual product. Considering the stage of this design and the integrity of the idea, I focused on and emphasized the communication and storytelling of the idea itself. Personally I think the consistency of each deliverable is more important than other thing, and I do not want to abruptly put anything which is immature on the first integrated deliverable of the idea, which will conflict and restrain the design process.
In order to communicate this idea to audience, I must be clear in scenario(s) of problem statement and design question. When I looked back to my first storyboard, I realized that lack of real world footage can be a disconnection between story and audience. In order to connect audience’s experience of bag packing and traveling, I decided to skecth down a second storyboard with a traveler’s bag packing process. It was mostly about purchasing items for bag packing before trip, and the confusion of preparation (coming from the lack of local understanding at the destination).
VIDEO SHOOTING
Based on my second storyboard, I shot all my footage videos about a traveler purchasing items for traveling in QFC. Michael and Jeremy, actors in my video, had been really helpful during the entire video shooting process. We shot around 20 footages with Michael, the traveler, holding 10 different items that might be useful during traveling, and Jeremy, a helpful friend, giving out some suggestions of Michael’s shopping.
STORYBOARD III
After recording my footages and starting editing those, I recapped my storyboard and noticed that the story line was too weak to demonstrate the concept and function of my idea. Although amount my footages were enough for me to form a great video, the sequence I arranged was out-of-focus and did not support my idea with sufficient information. That is why I came up with a third storyboard that demonstrate the main idea with moving icons, which the quality is more controllable than one of photography or video.
In this final version of storyboard, I made my footage and animation to take in charge of different part of my video. All the concepts of the idea are demonstrated in moving illustrations, while footage presents how this problem is related to the travelers, trying to recall everyone’s experience of bag packing. I expected the mixture of animation and real world footages would make my idea look more convincing in the video, telling a stronger and integrated story in my video.
VIDEO EDITING
The software I used for video editing were Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Illustrator (all of them were CS6). I started from editing all the video I shot on Adobe Premiere Pro, and create the animation in both Adobe After Effects and Adobe Illustrator. I have not used After Effects before and this was a good chance for me to learn and practice basic skills of After Effects. Icons in animation were all created by me through Illustrator, and they were all imported to After Effects for creating animation. I finalized all my works on Premiere Pro.
SOUND
Managing the sound of the video was also a tough part. Since we had a constraint of 2-min video, the video should have a quick and consistent pacing. I re-recorded my narrative for over 15 times, in order to catch up the speed of the video and speak out every sentence articulately. Also, at first I had a specific film score in mind that fully represents the atmosphere I would like to create in the video. However, I had no time to compose and produce my own music in Garage Band. I ended up mixing some Banjo loops in Garage Band and put it in my video as the background music.
RESULT
Finally, here comes the video! (You can also scroll to top of the page and check it out.)
CRITIQUE
During the critique session, the video received overall positive feedback. The consistency and overall atmosphere of the video. The story itself is clear, and according to the response that did connect to audience’s personal experience, which is something I intended to do. Some questioned about the music choice, saying it might be too light for an idea demonstration video.
After viewing others’ works, I found lots of things from those videos that I should have integrated in mine. The major one is that I do fall short on not showing the actual interface/prototype on my video, which makes the purpose of my video and others slightly different. Also, I was so wowed by different people telling their design’s stories in different way. I took notes and sketched down some different ways to tell my story afterwards, which made me understand more about my own idea and story.
REFLECTION
During the process, what I learned the most was that if you want to communicate (or sell) the idea, you must look into both big picture and detail at the same time: keep the consistency of deliverable. Due to my previous experience, any inconsistency shown in any form of deliverable can cause all types of misunderstanding to audience. It has to be well-planned in terms of communication process, and what you tell your audience has to always be clear. Keep iterating on deciding what you are going to communicate about your idea is really helpful.
