Standing for Self-Expression: A Departure from the Comment-Verse
Defining a new method of expression on live shows while channelling a community-first approach.
Episode 01: Say what you need to say
Earlier this year, we began rethinking how Live Experiences work, one that was an incredible environment for our Content Creators and Consumers to showcase creativity and feel the warmth that emanates from community interaction. 😊 We sought to move away from the existing definition of ‘Live’ as we know it with one goal in mind:
Standing for creative self-expression and authenticity. Because there’s a certain freedom that arises when we’re just ourselves.
With this in mind, we drew several parallels with the real world we live in. Live Experiences in the digital world should be like any other form of art and expression in the real world, right?
When we think of going to the Theatre or a Stand up comedy show with friends, it’s always exciting because there’s a dynamic quality associated with it being a live event.
The depth of the storyline and the sense of community amongst our fellow viewers are two enjoyable by-products of watching a theatrical show. This made us assess a lingering thought about comments:
Are comments on Live representing real expression?
Let’s understand the ingredients that make a live show 👨🏼🍳:
- Creators interact with the audience through audio & video i.e. through a live show frame.
- Audience interact with the creator through comments i.e. by leaving a slice of their views. Let’s know more about the sentiment behind comments, shall we?
Comments are responses, opinions, views shared by the audience. These responses are portals into understanding the audience’s emotions and are a reflection of their views, thoughts, and how they feel.
These engage with us in 2 ways:
- By sharing our views with an audience, anyone can voice their opinions freely. This gives us a platform to be seen and heard for what we believe i.e. individual opinions can be shared with the world.
- Comments also give us an insight into what others are thinking. This gives us a sense of other perspectives, outside of our own i.e. the community’s opinions can be read and absorbed by us.
Social media users today aren’t shy about sharing their thoughts and feelings. The kind of emotion these Comments contain can range across a spectrum: from genuine kindness to mind-boggling wit. 😝
Generally, the more effort that’s put into crafting these creative opinions, the more is the inkling to be seen and appreciated for them. So free-flowing expression can be powerful in fostering community, connecting us with a larger realm of people.
So, what’s the problem at hand?
- Problem statement: To build better consumer engagement with the Live show using a parallel mode of interaction.
- User base: To equip our audience (the under-25 demographic) with the ability to share what they’re thinking, freely.
- Core philosophy: To create a space that’s exciting, fresh, and fun to use because as we know, Gen-Z users crave new and exciting experiences.
Time for a social experiment 🧪
Before thinking of a new product direction, we needed to understand more about a user’s motivation behind expressing themselves on live shows. Let me paint you a picture:
One sunny afternoon at our HQ ☀️, a group of 12–15 of our teammates gathered to watch a 20-minute live show. Watching that show as a group and feeling the energy of other excited folks was truly an electric feeling. 🤩Every couple of minutes in the show, a number of opinions were shared and several jokes were cracked. 🤣
As an experiment, and with the aim of making our views seen and heard, we began scribbling and doodling on colourful Post-it notes. The sheer excitement of selecting a colourful stickie, voicing our views, sharing it with one another and hoping that it was enjoyed by others was so memorable. Further, the process of accidentally discovering creative stickies added to the fun. 😊
- What if…we could replicate the experience of sharing thoughtful stickies with our Creators and Consumers?
- Could that motivate them to share meaningful messages and freely express themselves?
To validate these hypotheses, we built a prototype and approached several young folks to test this new approach…. they loved this fresh, new take! The biggest takeaway that stemmed from these experiments was:
As we each placed a vivid stickie note on a wall surrounded by a cluster of others, we were each tempted to steal a glance at the remaining messages. The emotion associated with seeing one’s stickie, among a sea of others greatly reinstates a feeling of belonging and community.
A sneak-peak about the Live Screen🎤
After imagining this experience in the physical realm, we were bursting with enthusiasm to translate this to the digital world as well. But first, where would this occur?
This is the screen where our consumers would consume the curated creator content and engage with a larger community by expressing their opinions. This screen is split into 2 large components:
- Canvas: This highlights the creators creating the video content in the live screen. (There’s a lot to explain about our process here, but more on that later)
- Activity board: This allows the consumers to express freely about the show.
To understand how the Activity Board would work, we needed to assess 2 big factors:
- Movement i.e. how would one navigate in the board of stickies?
- Data i.e. what kind of information would the board of stickies capture?
Where are we now? 🧐
After a tireless couple of months, we just shipped this brand-new experience to our users and oh, are we excited for this fresh take! 🥳 We’re currently validating a few things:
1. Freedom of expression for consumers:
- How much do consumers enjoy freely expressing themselves?
- Would they enjoy more enhanced tools to customise their opinions: through doodles, threads of stickies, and creator spotlighting of favourite stickies?
2. Scalability as a platform:
- How can we platformise our live destination screen to cater to a variety of use cases: like gaming streams, shopping experiences, and several genres of live show content?
3. Building the essence of community:
- Would methods to engage creators with consumers using stickies as a medium create a more holistic sense of community?
As we continue to learn more about our users, what works and what needs polishing, we are all so curious to see where this journey takes us and how we can add a sprinkle of joy to our users with our humble mascot: the Stickie 😄.
Signing off 👋🏼
Reimagining the world of Live has had its challenges. Conceptualising a new world from the ground up, one where we questioned the fundamentals of how a live experience works has been a collaborative, inquisitive, and exciting journey. For me as a newbie in this design team, I learnt one important thing:
To create something innovative and fresh, we need to first question everything as we know it. Only when we rethink everything, we can strive for what’s next in the biz.
A massive shout out to the product and design pioneers in this journey: Naveen Ramaswamy, Kanishk Mehta, Shrey Soni, Siddharth Chattar. And to my incredible designer fam who consistently push me to do my best: Swapnil Sharma & Apoorva Singh.
Pssst…here’s what’s going to happen next 👀
We’re not going to leave you on a cliffhanger, just yet! 😄 Catch us in episode 02, where we’ll explore how our Stickie sailed through further complexities and shined through. Until then, Toodles!
