SHORT FORM AVATARS

Transforming avatar agents & collabs into the go-to tools for short-form content creation – a personal production studio in your pocket!

01 ► refresh your "senses"

Each highly competitive short-form platform wants to shift the market trajectory in their favor, especially obsessing over filters. But what tools give young creators the confidence to create authentic content, professionally edit, write back commenters and whip up new content all while going viral?

Gen Z is not open to the concept of a “digital self” but rather branded tools for creation. And as much as creators value their online brand, they value community more. With the newly released cloud-based collaboration, avatar automation and creation tools that fundamentally move and behave differently, a one person production studio has been placed in the hands of short-form content creators.

Reimagining the short form video platform as a collaborative, cloud based content-creation space with interactive UI AND Avatars serving as the creators' "in-their-pocket" production team.

authentic ways of presenting

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Instead of clicking buttons, creators command digital agents to automate repetitive site management, streamline content creation tasks and explore their online brand identity.

To ensure successful adoption, I pushed for avatars to perform the roles of a "virtual production" team with automated programming due to creators’ transparency concern; digitally masking cloaks them in fake, digital identities. Therefore, self recordings create creators’ “signatures”, unique trademarks for followers to quickly recognize their favorite creators’ brand and natural language descriptions automate updates.

confidence worth posting

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Creators gain new, powerful COLLAB tools like hacking clips, tap credits & reactions, side-by-side split screen zones, and spatial body tracking effect for virtual choreographing.

Learning how to make great content while hitting your #1 goal of growing an audience, there is a lot of pressure. Drawing from my past building confidence in young learners, collaborations ease anxiety, build confidence and inspire trust with audiences.

pro grade storytelling

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A reimagined filter menu as a drag and drop editing platform, rather than a traditional UI, is inherently a more playful way to help creators re-envision how they make digital videos.

And with most creators dreaming of becoming expert editors, I quickly discovered my role was to rethink how easy it could be for users to interface with the platform, not just the resulting video content and trendy new filters.

one step ahead of followers

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Making the job of conscientious decisions easier for creators, natural language requests provide advice on how the audience perceives content and understanding of associations behind chosen symbols.

In respecting known limitations with privacy laws, I designed the system to only provide data from follower posts, reactions, view counts, universal inclusion standards — in turn providing custom, analytical feedback loops of creative “idea starters.”

Collecting diverse Gen Z and expert perspectives through targeted posts, social listening, and conversations with qualitative provocations allowed the team to gauge the social pulse around identity, digital confidence and growing an online community.

This research led to untapped opportunities that require understanding shifts when culturally designing for Gen Z. I quickly took on the role of guiding the client through this organizational pivot by leveraging their personal priorities around community features to champion the development of the collaboration tools and transitioning the conversation away from avatars as filter to effects as tools and production roles.

Development techniques to revise a short-form platform into a mobile-cloud, collaborative “production studio.” Embracing the creator’s role as a STORYTELLER and design principles of INSPIRATION, continual CONNECTION and PLAY, content creation became less about crafting the perfect video and more about augmenting a space for connection and self expression.

collaboration simulating

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With the tipping point from design to realization sometimes being as simple as doing it yourself, I led collective sessions, where each team member had a unique GEO-remote location, of filming and editing testing creator’s preferred off-the-shelf phone apps.

Discovering a multitude of dead ends — vertical editing limitations, cumbersome tools, mismatched procedures for novices and pros alike — I turned our design solution into a tool that mitigates platform exodus with one stop shop if you will.

tactile wireframing

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With my goal to ignite a new class of Gen Z creators, I explored tangible interactions that make the storytelling process feel as light and inspirational as scrolling through content.

To create feedback loops that recognize creators’ efforts and ingenuity, I placed sensory elements in the mobile UI to improve filming, editing, and staying inspired in the space.

insightful mapping

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Being the owner of the big picture, I designed interactive brainstorms to evolve the opportunities with user journey challenges and insights around Community — Tools — Confidence — Authenticity into client ready designs.

I also structured a strategic framework to guide the client in the development of the new offerings, focusing on the ease of the Collab features implementation with the platform already being cloud-based.