Context
In 2016, when 360° videos were still a novel concept to many, GoPro VR embarked on a mission to provide a stellar first-time experience with this emerging technology.
Problem to solve
How can we ensure first-time users have an intuitive and engaging experience with 360° videos?
My role
I was tasked with designing and optimizing the user experience to ensure that first-time users could intuitively engage with and navigate through 360° videos, in order to incentivize them to get into the 360° camera experience, that I designed a year after.
I was managing a team of 5 multidisciplinary designers (UI, Frontend, Motion designer and visual designer), and delivered the entire plateform in less than 3 months in order to release it for CES 2016.
My approach
In order to deliver this MVP, I had to make sure everyone was clear on what are the jobs to be done.
After having documented every problems, and design rational in order to solve it for our digitally challenged users, I created a entire scenario of our MVP, which includes all the different personas concerned by the project.
I also took care of illustrating all the steps, by prompting in Midjourney, in order to leverage AI in creating a high level of empathy with users, which is crucial in a context of offline experience design, where the user is confronted to more efforts and physical interactions.
Onboarding users to the best of VR.
One of the main missions of GoPro VR was to offer a first good experience 360° videos. Back in 2016, most of the people never heard about 360° videos.
With the engineering team, we worked days and nights in creating the best video player possible. Allowing users to move their phone to move in the video, to change video projections by pinching in and out. Also, after many user tests, I decided to design all the mobile app vertically, including the video player. (At a time where "stories", "tiktoks" and overall vertical videos wasn't a thing at all).
It was the best way to directly show to the user this was not a "classic" video, and that feature has been key in the success of our UX.
Ensure a great content experience
When working on a media platform, featuring a lot of UGC, it's important to balance the space you give the creators community but ensure at the same time the best quality content is provided to the viewers.
At that time, our users were rather discovering 360°video for the first time or, for those who already tried, they had quite disappointing experiences due to the bad quality of most of the produced content.
I designed a journey based on two factors to ensure a successful experience.
At the top of the screen, on the homepage, and inside each category, I displayed the highlighted content, curated by our team.
Below, the rest of the videos were automatically sorted, showing the most viewed content by default.
Ensure the best interaction design on each support
While designing the entire interface of GoPro VR on the mobile app, tablet app, desktop, and VR headset, one of the most crucial aspects has been the actual video consumption experience.
Interaction design was crucial on that point. For instance on desktop, we had to make sure the user would be able to interact with the 360° with the mouse, meaning I had to lead many types of research in order to understand if the user would prefer to move the mouse in the direction they want to see, or the opposite direction, if they prefer to drag and drop, to point and click...
Also, I needed to make sure the UI of the player would come when the user needs it, but also disappear when the user enjoys the immersion offered by 360°
