Business Problem

How Can We Retain Users? 

In November 2018, we faced the challenge of how to stand out in a niche market, with no advantage over other competitors that had been in the market for several years. We have built a simple app, achieved 1 million registered users and wanted to retain them.

Discover User Problem

To analyze the user problem, I did qualitative and quantitative research: 
Conducted 20+ face-to-face user interviews ; gathered insights from creator management team; reviewed community feedback through the creator community in Slack.
Analyzed amplitude metrics (retention rate); monitored content engagement rate (views, completions).

User Interviews with Professional Creators

In November 2018, I worked with the L.A. office to recruit professional creators, and coordinated with the product team to write interview facilitation plans. The product team, our co-founder, 1 product manager, 3 engineers, and I flew to the LA office to conduct user interviews with 20+ creators in 3 days. 

We wanted to discover what needs and frustrations our professional creators were experiencing, and learn their likes and dislikes. 

User Interview Questions

Discover questions (15mins)
‍Could you tell us a bit about your background as a professional creator? 
Why do you use Firework? 
Other than Firework, what are some other apps you use to showcase and monetize your videos? 
How would you describe your past and current experience with Firework?
‍
Dive deep questions (15mins - 30mins)
‍What are the challenges you encounter when shooting a video on Firework? 
What is your current experience when editing a video on Firework? 
What improvements would make Firework easier and better to use? 

Key Insights

Many advanced features were suggested during the interview. The top request was to improve the creation experience. 
Most professional creators used Firework as an upload tool, not a creation tool, because we only supported basic functionality. 
Most professional creators created a wide-field view. But they had to crop off the horizontal parts and optimize the video in portrait mode when uploading to Firework. 
Creators used multiple video editing tools at once such as InShot, Adobe Premiere and Adobe Effects to edit a video. That was rather time consuming.

User Problem

Professional creators were unable to create a wide field of view in a vertical-only creation experience.

“I usually create cinematic stories through my Nikon camera with Trope, and edit content in a professional video editing tool, and then upload in Firework. “
- Creator specializing in travel content

Define the Direction

Reveal: A new Form of Storytelling

Because we already have a product with good traffic, we decided to prioritize a killer feature "Reveal© video" based on user problems and opportunities we have identified, which allows professional creators and content viewers to film and watch videos in both vertical and horizontal formats, and in turn, which provides a new form of storytelling.

Explore and Iterate

How to Create a Reveal Video?

V1: Coexisting Vertical and Horizontal Recording

I started exploring the similar options available, like FaceTime. During filming, I provided a viewfinder on the screen so professional creators would know how their video would appear to content viewers when holding their phones upright. However, through in-person user tests with our interactive prototype in LA, we found that professional creators had difficulty understanding the “creating a Reveal video” concept while interacting with our prototype. While recording, they felt the view finder was distracting. Additionally, the viewfinder was too small to show the horizontal or vertical view.

V1: Coexisting Vertical and Horizontal Editing

I started to explore a solution for users who hold the phone horizontally to edit a Reveal video; it was not intuitive for professional creators to hold the phone horizontally all the time.

User Insights

Professional creators wanted to view the horizontal/vertical content in one shot clearly. As a follow-up, we brainstormed with professional creators using a whiteboard in LA to define the final solution of the recording experience.

Professional creators wanted to preview and edit a Reveal video vertically during the recording. Also,
we discovered another user need in which professional creators wanted the control to lock the Reveal timeline based on the story they intended to outline to content viewers. 

Another feedback from professional creators was that they wanted to deliver the accurate content both in landscape view and portrait view after uploading a Reveal video. 

Final Solution: Coexisting Vertical and Horizontal Recording

After three rounds of iterations, we arrived at our final design for launch. We emphasized the recording area on the device (made non-recording area black) and showed the guidelines for the landscape area (landscape) and default view (portrait). The design was similar to the shooting experience through camera with Trope, which allows horizontal view and vertical view in one shot.

Final Solution: Lock Reveal Timeline During Recording

For the final solution, professional creators can drag the cursor to lock the Reveal timeline when they preview the video during the recording. As a result, viewers will see an ordinary video clip. This can help professional creators outline an unexpected ending, for example.

Final Solution: Crop Reveal Video

For the final solution, we enable users to zoom in/out to crop the Reveal video and adjust the changes based on the guidelines.

How to View a Reveal Video?

V1: View a Reveal video on Main Feed

Content viewers wanted to recognize Reveal videos when exploring content. Our first design option provided a static tooltip to educate content viewers to rotate the phone to preview the video when they saw the Reveal video for the first time. The tooltip would be dismissed after content viewers rotated their phones. However, that was not working. Users rotated the phone to the wrong angle during user testing.

Final Solution: View a Reveal Video on Main Feed

To create the same expectation for content viewers, the final solution was to provide a Reveal label and an animation to help content viewers understand how to view a Reveal video/continue to the next step by rotating the phone on top of a Reveal video.

Final Design Walkthrough

Viewing Experience

Creation Experience