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VML Video Management Platform
PROJECT Involvement
Part of a design team, strickly working on designing the translation services for videos and adding to other features
Tools Used
Figma, Adobe Suite, JSON, Premiere Pro
💪 The Challenge
I worked on a few problems that needed solved while at VML. The application already had a subtitle editing feature, the code auto created subtitles but they were not always accurate, we needed to make the caption editing a lot easier. That lead to users requesting the ability to manually change translation captions too as currently some languages translated specific words wrong. The platform also had bad feedback about the video player, it was very basic and didn't offer much information for a user when using it.
❓How can we make the subtitle and translation feature seamless and easy to edit without it taking a very long time? How can we improve the video playback experience and what features are missing for our users?
⭐️ The Process
- Research: Feedback forms from current users, the translation editing was missing and subtitle editing didn't offer enough guidance when editing. The video player lacked audio controls, proper time bar that was easy to interact with and the captions / translation on the player needed to be added.
- Product Ideation: I made a few different drafts for the translation editing, which I wanted to incorporate into the same style as subtitle editing. This first meant making the caption editing a lot easier and provide a better user experience. I also tested a lot of different video players and how they handle captions and translation.
- Design and stakeholders: Since the design system was already in place high fidelity designs were easy to make. Presenting the new feature designs to upper management and the developers, making changes with feedback.
- Developer handover: Adding new components to a design system, I did have to walk devs through the new changes to caption edit and explain how it fits with transaltion since the style is now the same.
🎯 The Outcome
The Platform had great success, the subtitle editing now involved a timeline which highlighted at which stage of the video there were captions. The video automatically translated to different languages but the user on the same screen without having to use different features, they can now change the english captions if they are wrong and see them side by side with the language a user wished to edit. It workes well, user forms came back to us with great feedback on the usability and the speed of them feature.
The video player also worked well, I had the idea to stylise the play button to be an animated version of our logo on play and pause. This was a nice branded touch since when embeded elsewhere you could see our logo. Adding control for captions and translations allowed more flexibility for all users and accessability while the player scrubber was a lot more intuative and modernised.
