Video Syndication
Video Syndication (VS) platform ranged from Verizon Media’s O&O publishers, 3rd party publishers, content creators, sales teams, account managers, ad aggregators, arbitrage resellers, OTT app developers, advertisers and more. The platform contained over 55K unique users from most countries in the world where the platform was translated into dozens of languages. Clients could harness the power of VS comprehensive yet flexible solutions optimized for controlling and distributing video content. From management and discovery to analytics and syndication, VS enabled clients to optimize video programming, video management and video monetization.
App Studio
App studio was a self-service creation tool which enabled content publishers to create Over-the-Top (OTT) TV apps and mobile apps for platforms such as Apple TV, FireTV, Roku, iOS, Android (mobile and TV), and responsive web/desktop-based video galleries.
Strategy
The approach to this tool was to take an existing functionality and design it to be more user focused and easier to produce OTT apps for video content delivery. New functionality was added to allow content providers to display shows with episodes and seasons. We also wanted to allow users to add the show graphics and metadata, change the order of videos, choose the type of device such as, TV, Desktop or Mobile.
Brainstorm Whiteboard
Sketches
Workflows
The workflows applied to the framework established in Video Syndication. I explored multiple ideas and built the use-cases in Sketch and imported the mocks to Invision for review with PMs and the engineering team. Workflow use-cases included, template selection, graphics input, metadata input, device/app selection, page setup, page orientation, build version tracking, upload instructions.
Workflows
Final UX
The success of App Studio allowed publishers to create over 35 Roku apps without the need for technical assistance. Over 200 apps were created. The tool was used by external and internal publishers, such as FOX Broadcasting Company, Verizon Media, and Autoblog.
App Studio Start Page
List Page
Template Select
Graphics and Metadata Page
Show Page Organization
Menu Creation & Management
App Display Loaded onto OTT Device
Video Playlists
For a website that serves up videos in order, a producer needs to collect a list of videos and put them in order to be shown in a video player. I redesigned a product feature for Video Syndication that made it easy to add hundreds of videos to a playlist and to add metadata that would then create a tag to be served up on a website or mobile app.
Sketches
The initial process started with a brainstorm and requirements doc. Once finalized I created multiple options of workflows by exploring ideas to be approved by project managers and engineering for technical limitations then applied to wireframes.
Sketches of playlist workflow
Implementation
The design solution was to allow a user to easily select videos by using the existing search capability to add videos to a playlist. The types of playlists that could be added were, static videos (selected one at a time and permanent), dynamic videos (delivered on the fly based on tags in the playlist), semantic videos that would appear based on the text on the page. Also the functionality inlcluded date version control, preview of the list, reordering with drag and drop, metadata entry, video preview, thumbnail management and video insert after the playlist was created.
Start Playlist Page
Add Videos with Search
Playlist Management
Video Insert
Default Video display and Video Group Types
Video Detail Panel
Drag & Drop Reordering
Setting a Date for Playlist to Run
Header States and Date Versions
Video Monetization
At Video Syndication the video monetization is the process of generating revenue from videos through advertising. Video content publishers monetized their content with Video Syndication. This system helped publishers create the slots to insert advertisements into videos and set an order of videos by serving up ads where desired by the publisher. This was an important source of revenue for content publishers.
Ad Schema
Ad Schema was a design experience that allowed the account manager of publishers to select the location insert of an ad for each video. I designed this as a visual interpretation of a video and the color coding displayed the positions of ad inserts to be placed pre-roll, mid-roll, overlay, and/or post-roll.
Ad Experience
Ad Experience was the inserting of ads in between a series of videos, This system was set-up for users to set the start and end dates for the video run. Once this was set up a tag was created and then added to a video player which would use this setting to serve up ads in this sequence similar to Ad Schema. I designed it to be a visual workflow so it was easier than the original text input version.