Filmist App Case Study: Designing a digital Production House.
How might we help independent filmmakers secure funding & support for the production of short films?
Filmist makes short-film production easier, faster, and more rewarding, making it the best place to collaborate, earn funds, and showcase your work. I led the ideation, strategy and design for its application across iOS platforms.
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My Role
User Research, User Interviews, Journey Mapping, Storyboarding, Sketching, Wireframing, Screen Flows, Visual Design, Interaction Design
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Platforms
iOS
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Year
2021-2022
Prototype.
Explore the Hi-Fidelity prototype here.
Problem.
Short-films contribute to the health of the entire film industry by allowing up-and-coming talent the chance to get noticed and hone their skills. There is a reluctance to invest in shorts because turning a profit is seen as impossible due to a lack of commercial distribution.
What does the current production landscape look like?
Telefilm Canada pours around $100 million into feature films every year, $12 million into lower budget feature films, and $0 into short films.
Short films in festivals.
Despite the lack of support from government funding, we can see that the rate of short films being produced and screened at festivals continues to grow rapidly. From 2000 to 2015, the number of produced short films increased by a whopping 700%. Which reveals one key detail:
Filmmakers want to make short films.
What do we see?
There’s rapid growth in the production of short films every year, but funding allocation generally does not expand to meet this demand. No one is working to identify how to increase short film budgets.
Opportunity.
I believe that by building a digital platform for independent filmmakers to gather resources and share their work with people that care, we can foster the appropriate exposure required to gain adequate funding for future work.
Based upon data from in-person interviews and user reviews, I organized my observations and categorized them using a customer journey map. This helped me expose pain points and areas for improvement along the user’s journey. I identified various touch-points by intent and tasks engaged during typical production practices.
Putting the user first.
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Strategize.
By studying the user’s pain points and motivations, I began laying out user stories to explore various tasks the user may need through our digital solution.
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Organize.
Next I organized my user stories under three main epics based on what the user might want to perform. Upload videos, communicate through comments and submitting projects.
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Refine.
I looked at ‘Uploading a video’ as a core epic, as this would become the foundation for our application, and the primary need from our users.
I created a task flow diagram to visually map out how a user might interact with the application to accomplish the core epic goal.
Ideas to action.
UI Inspiration Board
Based on my chosen epics and task flow analysis, I can deduce key pages & features that the user will interact with, and for which we need inspiration. I chose to look at Reddit for its effective use of space: separating content by lines, and minimalist design. I also looked at YouTube for aesthetic inspiration and to better understand information hierarchy when presenting video content. Seeing as FilmIst needs to display video as a primary function, I pulled inspiration from the biggest video hosting apps to learn how they make choices when displaying videos & how a user can interact with other users through comments on the same page/ while performing the task of ‘watching’.
Now I was finally ready to begin brainstorming various possibilities and iterations of layouts and how the user would navigate each page to achieve their goals based on our task flow diagram. After countless paper sketches, we moved our design to low-fi wireframes, conducted 2 rounds of user-testing, and then moved to mid-fi wireframes applying what we learned.
Mid-Fi Prototype.
Explore the early prototype here.
Injecting colour.
I knew I wanted the UI for Filmist to be darker in order to present video content in a close-to-cinema experience, but I also knew that I would need colours to contrast for points of interest within the navigation of the app.
Unspoken rule.
Throughout the film industry, the colours orange and blue are used consistently for marketing assets, as well as cinematography for it’s pleasing presentation and eye-catching contrasts. Orange and blue work well together because they are complimentary colours and can represent opposing elements (fire & ice, hot & cold, etc…), alluding to conflict, intrigue and excitement.
Orange & Blue
I decided to take inspiration from this famous contrasting principle and apply it to Filmist’s visual design. It would eventually become it’s brand colours and be used consistently through the app design.
Hi-Fi Prototype.
Explore the Hi Fidelity prototype here.
Filmist marketing site.
Much like the development of the application’s design…
similar processes carried over to creating the website. I started with research and inspiration, then paper sketches, mid-fi and finally a refined hi-fi prototype. I made sure to encompass and showcase Filmist’s branding throughout the marketing site.
Explore the Prototype here.
Design impact & future thinking.
What did we learn?
It all begins with an idea. We learned that we could produce real world impact with simple design intervention. Through restructuring existing formats and creating engaging interaction, we saw how an independent filmmaker trying to make a living through what they love, turn into a very real and viable possibility.
Filmist impact.
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Collaboration.
Now filmmakers can come together, share crucial information and work together to produce profitable short films.
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Funding.
Filmmakers can contribute to other’s work where they feel best, and earn funding for their own future projects.
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Showcasing.
A specialized theatre for short films found directly in the app, means community support, scouting for talent, and distribution.
Lessons along the way.
I learned a lot of important things to take away from this design, and the most important one, was flexibility. It’s ok to pivot your ideas, and your designs to create a better and more meaningful experience in the end. The visual inspiration for Filmist evolved and changed along the way, but as a designer, you have to remember to embrace ambiguity. Creativity is intelligence having fun.
Next steps.
Recruit dev team to begin building full application.
Continue to conduct user testing and iterating remaining screens and functions.
Launch product.
