Onveloop
Visions of the future from years gone by invariably featured the use of video phones in lieu of telephones. Although the technology needed for video communication is now ubiquitous, that particular vision remains elusive. The goal of this project was to examine the social and technological factors involved in video communication to create a viable web-based video messaging application.
During initial user research, our team chose to focus on college students and young professionals as our primary audience since these groups are most likely to meet the minimal requirements for expertise and technology. After identifying our audience, we surveyed potential users to discover how they currently use technology to communicate. From their responses, we identified recurring concerns that influence interaction with a video comunication system and we identified the contexts in which video communication would be most welcome. At the conclusion of initial user research, we established the mission for this project, to "enable easy creation of video to enhance communication in established personal relationships by emphasizing message quality within specific contexts."
We subsequently explored three concepts for this application: video messaging as a love letter, video messaging as a scrapbook and video messaging as a campfire story (group storytelling). Feedback from users identified the first concept as the strongest, so chose it for further refinement. After documenting the information architecture of the system, developing wireframes, and conducting an additional round of evaluative testing, we produced a working prototype of the application with Adobe's FLEX technology.
Course: 05-855/51-725 Basic Interaction
Instructor: Shelley Evenson
Team: Casey Hickerson, Wiebke Poerschke, Edmundo Ruiz, Kyle Vice, Jackie Weber
Completed: Fall 2007