Cinderella's Dream Comes True
-- allow high quality same theme video producing and consuming to Facebook by fulfilling Cinderella's star dream

Project: I502 Experience Design Coursework

Background: Today (Feb 7th) Facebook also announced a partnership with Comcast that includes the site’s first foray into user video uploads. Get the rundown on NewTeeVee  . It’s extremely limited — videos will be submitted as part of contests, and compiled into a half-hour “Facebook Diaries” show — but video is a new and interesting advertising stream, something our contributor Robert Young suggests Facebook desperately needs.

Goal:  Build a user-generated video pool, occupy the online video market, and increase the social awareness.

Why Not YouTube: Yes, there is a YouTube existing. But the problem of YouTube is its focus is too broad and it's quite diverse in production quality so that it's painful to get both desired content and production quality simply based on the search and rating feature. So we are not trying to make a new YouTube, a video content providing and sharing platform.

Strategy: The three key strategies are: firstly, video uploaders are encouraged to provide contents within the same theme at the same time, so that a common topic can be focused and a stronger mainstream social awareness can be generated. Secondly, it can encourage and assist producers to increase the production quality so that views can get high quality user-generated video stream easily. Thirdly, not only internet, TV is involved as there will be a video contest and selected user-generated videos will be shown on TV. So uploaders can get more exposure and chance as they could win the contest locally, regionally and nationally to fulfill their star dream.

Incentive: Since it's not the game played by service provider itself. It's a web 2.0 game involving users. So how to make people buy this concept and voluntarily participating in it? The incentive of participation in uploading to facebook instead of other video uploading platforms are as follows:
1, Star complex: Consciously of not, many people have “star complex”. But not everyone can be lucky enough to make the star dream come true.
Below: how stars are generated from the system

2,  Socialization beginning from local community. Local community media and socialization can provide more relevant social buddies, events and media contents.
3,  High quality video pool could attract more audience.
Below: An analysis in terms of  production quality and target audience and content

 
4,  Get access easily to potential stars and interact with them by indirect interaction: commenting and adding into social circle (short term), as well as direct interaction: using webcam to integrate views into the the central stage (long term).

Implementation: Use both TV and internet. Narrow down the internet social circle and have each community to generate its own star and have those stars to compete on behalf of the communities. Narrow down the theme.  Take good advantage of centralized TV program to create focused awareness.

How does internet makes it happen?
Internet makes Cinderella no different from queen and princess in virtual world. Everyone can be the queen or princess in a particular community, large or small. 
But the problem is internet creates too many “queens” and “princesses” so that inflation happens, the value of stars in internet, social community decreased. Plus, the “queens” and “princesses” are localized in a particular community such as facebook indiana university community or Peking No.4 High school community. But do people feel satisfied enough to be the tiger in one single mountain?

How dose TV makes it happen?    
TV can help make star dream come true since TV is a centralized media, bonding people with demographic diversity together viewing the same program at the same time to create a same social topic and atmosphere. More people focus on less stars. That increases the value of these home-made “queens” and “princess”. 
The problem of TV is there is no interaction between audience and Cinderella. The participation into the program is much less than that in the internet platform.   

How do we take both advantages to make the goal?

User scenario:
1, Community video star is generated from user voting, namely applauder feature.
2, How these videos are rated, both by public and by professional producers to filter contents.

 

3, Community stars' videos are put into TV show to catch audience's eyes.
4, Audience could interact with these potential stars by internet facebook platform or by interactive TV system.

 

UI design:
To keep the consistence of Facebook user experience, in order to add the new feature, an information architecture is analyzed and provided to get an overall view of Facebook.

The left navigation bar with different contents such as photos, notes, events, etc leads users follow the topical structure. Then I articulated the part of “photos” and deployed it further. As you can see, there are several verbs such as “view”, “print”, ”delete” to show that the next level is task based structure.

This structure is typical for social network platform in that people focus on content more than operation. And also, people focus on the content of me, “my profile” “my events” and with me as the center to reach other contacts. So it is not audience based structure. It is me-based structure.  

To supplement the topical structure, there is also a general task based structure shown on the right top part. Such as “browse”, “log off”.
Below:  Facebook Information Architecture

 

Since the different participant group will involve into the new system, I analyzed different groups and how they interact with each other.
Below: Participant Groups

In order to increase the video quality, the key feature different from other video content uploading and sharing applications is content curation and judgment. Take both public and professional opinions into consideration.
Below: The curation filter process

Redesign:
Add "My video" in the left navigation bar.
Support video uploading, viewing, sharing, commenting, and buddy video feeding, same as "my photos" features to encouraging participating and content providing by sociable media.
Keep participants focus on the current hot theme.
Facilitate the first round content filter by community contacts. And generate the community star. 
Facebook community star video will represent each local or regional community to participate in the contest regional wide and even national wide.
Content are curated by professional producers, as well as public audience.
Final star will be elected and the video will be shown in TV.
Social awareness is generated, and participants are extended from internet facebook users to wider group: TV viewers, more democratically diverse and higher awareness. 

MIDDLE ZONE: My video stream. Integrat public and professional comments into video stream. Not only general comments, but also some professional critiques to help these amateur producers improve the quality of video production, preparing them to TV show contest.
Use sound layers to integrate the public viewers' preference using sound files of applauding or laughing to add atmosphere to the original video
Use sound layers to integrate the voice the professional critique sound file to indicate which part is good, which is not good, judging and giving review. Overall rate is calculated to make the selection of the video.

 

An alternative solution for comment feature:  using the visual layers and bubbles to display comments.

RIGHT ZONE: Emphasize on same theme video and encourage people to watch the same theme to discuss about them during a given period of time. Give users freedom to browse archived videos.