Gaining Insights and Collaborating to Enrich a Virtual Event Experience

Process behind making interactive live stream for Indonesia’s first and largest virtual fashion event

Challenges

Rather than to only design, as the person in charged for the website and interactive live stream I was also responsible to figure out how things work and what’s possible according to the timeline. Later I would also give direction to the tech and video production team to execute.

One of TADOtv’s case study. Source: entrepreneur.uai.ac.id

Gaining Insights

At the very beginning, I talked to three people that I think represent various backgrounds of fashion event audiences. I needed to know what experience they like from an offline event and what they expect from a virtual one.

Evan — works with people in the fashion industry

Evan has done some graphic design work in past years for a fashion brand and often been invited to their show.

Fiona — has interest in fashion

From her social media, it’s easy to spot Fiona’s interest in fashion. She follows updates from local designers and some of them participated on the event.

Scarlett — a fashion graduate and works as a stylist

Scarlett graduated from a fashion school and now works as freelance fashion stylist.

Discussing with Other Teams

Because it was a huge team effort, we shared how each of us would do things and discussed possibilities to make sure we deliver the best experience.

Video Production Team

The production team would make 2 minutes video for each designer that fits the collection’s concept from the setting, camera movement, and video editing. It would be more interesting but very different from what Samara expected. Since it would be more like a music video rather than a catwalk documentation, the initial idea to have multi-angle views was no longer relevant. I had to find a replacement based on this new concept.

Behind the scene of the video production

Livestreaming Platform / Vidio.com

We reached Vidio team to ask if we could modify their video player — to show interactive options and play another video — or get the live stream source URL (to play it on TADOtv interactive player). Turned out both required big changes which they didn’t think could be done in 1.5 months. Later we continued to work closely to find way for the website and video player to communicate using postMessage to do actions like mute/unmute, disable fullscreen, and the video pause function. For the website to have more control on video player would be useful to develop new idea later.

Show Operators

In few meetings, show operators and I discussed about the show’s rundown and broke down each segment to talk about every little things. These are the people who would be on the front-of-house/control room while the live show was running. They gave direction to the show host, kept the rundown on schedule, and also controlled what the audience see on Vidio player.

Example of a segment rundown (simplified)

Developing The Experience

“Exclusive” Experience

The first thing I did was looking for an alternative to replace the multi-angle views. The experience was meant to give invited guests another view of the show that others don’t have the privilege to see. An “exclusivity” — something that our insights agree is very important for the invited guests to have. So what I need to figure out was in what other form could an exclusivity be.

Samples from exclusive cut on Sebastian Gunawan’s collection

Technical Tricks

Combining Vidio’s live stream player and TADOtv interactive technology wasn’t simple because normally it’s supposed to come as a package (like a TV and its remote control). We needed to figure out how to blend both individual layers as one interactive live stream, or at least make it looks like so.

Scheduling

TADOtv team first came up with wireframes similar to what they have on their platform. The interactive option appears at a defined time for few seconds before it vanishes or automatically choose a default. This choose-your-own-adventure-like interactive option usually appears near the end of every video so the selected option will be played afterward.

Initial user flow (still with the multi-angle views) from TADOtv
Revised user flow that features two VVIP experiences
Visualization on the interactive live stream scheduling

Designing The Interface

Early exploration on visual identity (designed by Far Our Studio)
Every UI elements on the interactive live stream
Final prototype on interactive live stream

Audiences’ Response

Some Instagram stories from audience sharing their VVIP experience

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Mainly talking about product design and films. https://edwin.id/

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