Results:
In order to understand this new contributor community, and learn what tools they would need, we performed qualitative user interviews and created a set of contributor personas to help guide design and development and to align with business strategy. Led by our usability team headed by Mary Pat Gotschall, we interviewd 22 microstock/UGC (user generated content) contributors. This included 5 we visited at home in the Seattle area and another 17 spread across the US, Canada, and the UK. Cumuluatively we gathered over 29 hours of interview data. We found the contributors were very enthused about speaking to us - we had a 100% participation rate, and many of the study participants were willing to talk far longer than the allotted time. The rich amount of data enabled a much more refined view of our contributors, and just as importantly - we gained an understanding of potential contributors. Findings helped steer not only future content workflow development, but also more strategic decisions around site and contributor portal differentiation in an increasingly crowded microstock landscape.
We launched Veer Marketplace in 2010 as a way to bring lower cost, UGC-sourced, imagery to Veer customers.
Veer's contributor portal and workflow was extensively informed by our qualitative research and persona development. This included not only functionality of the upload tools, but also informed the ethos of business and product strategy. We focused on simplicity and adhered to the legacy of unique design at Veer.
Process:
Interviews were captured via audio and video (in some cases.) Remote sessions were audio recorded and screenshare was captured using GoToMeeting. Mary Pat led the interviews, and it was a fascinating and amazingly powerful learning experience for me that led to my desire to pivot from Product Management to UX Design adn User Research.
The team gathered in Calgary to brainstorm, and used affinity diagramming.
