We designed the specifications, as much as possible, around our existing process. That said, we know anyone, including research respondents, who need to capture and immediately share events using a variety of media so that collaborators can help to generate questions, meaning and learning’s in parallel will find our App invaluable.
Specifications/Main Steps:
Create a Project and give it a name
Give it a project ID. This will allow event updates to be recognised by an associated web based service we are developing
Create your themes. These are the topics or ‘must captures’ you will be observing and exploring with your subjects
Add followers or collaborators. These may be clients, colleagues or even consultants you are using specially for your study. Each time you capture an event and send it, your followers will be able to view and respond.
Describe your family members.
Click on New Entry to
- Choose you capture medium (video, picture, audio and text)
- Choose the theme(s) you wish to attach to your captured event
- Automatically fix the location and time
Once an event is captured, press send, share or save. Send will email your event to your collaborators. Save will save the event to your device for later synching and Share, once the web based service for our app is completed, will allow you to share clips which are not sensitive but nonetheless insightful, to be shared with the wider research community – you decide how wide.
From within the App. it is possible to quickly and easily view all of the events captured in chronological order.
It is also possible to add a description to each event before it is sent and shared.
In practice
I have spent weeks testing the app in both live project and test situations and have to honestly say I am thrilled with how intuitive, fun and useful this App is to use. The kind of testing I carried out can be described as destruction testing or seeing what it takes to make it crash. Three versions later and we have an application that has
- frozen on me only twice in three weeks – which is excellent by any standard
- never lost a captured event – despite the two freezes. Events I thought I had lost would be found in the ‘sending’ folder of my mailbox
- only slowed down when I am trying to add themes to a long clips while it’s encoding before being sent
Slowing down was a big source of frustration no matter how little time it took. The simple rule was the longer the video, the longer it took to encode.
My first response was to try and establish an optimum maximum film length which would not impact attachment of themes. This turned out to be a surprisingly long 90 seconds. Stay within that time window, and encoding has little to no impact on adding themes. In case you are wondering, 90 seconds to capture events and occasions is a very long time. And given we want to minimise or altogether eliminate film production and editing, a 90 second window is excellent discipline to work within.
A very simple solution
It came to me by accident. I was adding some new themes while setting up a new project when I wondered what would happen if I first selected my themes and then made my film. Since sending was the final task after making my clip I experienced no slowdown whatsoever even with much longer films. This may be a counterintuitive way of capturing events to some, but if you see a TV viewing/web surfing multi tasking occasion unfolding, it is very easy to choose the ‘multi task’ theme and then make your film. Once made press send and move on to the next event.
90 Second video
In order to make this app. fool proof, I have decided to limit the video length to 90 seconds. It will not be restrictive and it will force you to think economically about what and how much you capture.
Remember, this App. is not to make films with. It is to capture events with. If you want to make a film, use a video camera. That said, if I receive enough complaints, I may increase or even eliminate the time limit. But users must remember to input their themes before making a film to avoid slowing down.