Group 3: Visual
Contents
Participants
Participants of the third group create and edit visual assets such as photos, videos, and visualized data. We aimed to focus the discussion on problems and wants of working with visual assets within the CMS.
List of the participants
- Associate Video Producer
- CNBC.com Video Editor
Session Recordings
We voice-recorded the entire session to go back and identify the specific problems and opinions of the participants.
Voice Recording of the Focus Group Session 3
Session Photos
For our record, we took photos of the workflow maps that participants created.
Summarized Notes
Video Editor
General
- Does both Video Editor and Video Producer work
- Issue: Everyone is requesting for videos in their own way
- Some things get lost during the communication, e.g. where the video is ingested, where it is originating from
- Requesters are supposed to create video placeholders but they are not there, or put them in the wrong place
- Issue: People don’t refer to the standard ingest system and ask for video’s location
- Suggested Solution: Using standard software, i.e. Stratus
- Issue: As anyone can do anything in the system, there are times you get locked out of your own placeholder
- Need to kick them out or contact them if it’s okay
- Risk of ruining someone’s work and not being able to publish what needs to be published immediately is unnerving
Workflow
- Field Producer
- They don’t access CMS, so requests are very general and require a lot of more communication and time
- Video Producer agrees – lot of Field Producers and Reporters don’t know how to make requests clearly
- They are using archaic system that doesn’t work at all
- Suggested Solution by Video Producer: Better training
- They don’t access CMS, so requests are very general and require a lot of more communication and time
- Strategic Content: Tells what tags to put in for the videos
- International
- They can’t ingest the videos themselves, so the Video Editors are required to be in the office on holidays
- Have more problems with the people who don’t touch the system often, e.g. Prime, Hot Seat, News Associate, who request the videos
- Rarely work with Photo Desk: when they want a frame from a video
Video Producer
General
- Make original videos
- Issue: Lag between when she sends the video through and publish
- Video Editor agrees – “tech issues are rampant in the system,” and issues are random but guaranteed to happen
- Now told that she can omit the clip request and put Toolbelt ID in the FTP – it’s great because clip request is duplicate
- Issue: People are still filling in request forms
- Video Editor agrees – as you are creating the video placeholder, you are sending the clip request form to yourself. The only reason for the form is for the Video Producer team can put them in the spreadsheet at the moment
- Toolbelt issue: Changing the thumbnail is extremely difficult in Toolbelt
- Have to go through servers and folders, and Apple TV would show old thumbnail if not done correctly
- Suggested Solution: Simple drag and drop for all of the different platforms
- Video Editor agrees
Workflow
- Hot Seat: gets asked to produce a video about a trending story
- News Associate: ask assistance of the things that she does
- Video Editor: Getting videos into the system, cutting b-roll, etc. does last checking
- International, Prime, Strategic Content: produces videos
- Photo Desk: ask photo for videos, they ask for screenshots fro the videos
- Social: making social videos
Other
- A lot of the system is a carry over from VCPS days
- Video Hot Seat
- Puts a good video content on the homepage
Prioritization Ranking
| Features | Video Producer | Video Editor | Group 3 Average | Overall Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast saving | 4 | 5 | 4.5 | 4.8 |
| Easily navigate to different parts of the CMS | 4 | 5 | 4.5 | 4.5 |
| Easily apply search filters | 5 | 4 | 4.5 | 4.1 |
| Ability to do basic edits on videos in the CMS, e.g. trim | 5 | 4 | 4.5 | 3.6 |
| Google-like search for stories/assets | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4.8 |
| More organized search results | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4.6 |
| View the performance of a particular story | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4.4 |
| Fast loading search results | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4.3 |
| Being able to tell if the videos that are ready to be used | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4.3 |
| Quickly knowing the status of a specific story | – | 4 | 4 | 4.11 |
| Ability to do basic edits on photos, e.g. crop, level, contrast | 5 | 3 | 4 | 3.7 |
| Not seeing the fields that are irrelevant to the content type | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| Quickly publishing stories | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 4.7 |
| Easily replacing the assets in the text editor | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 4.2 |
| Ability to edit CMS from mobile | 5 | 2 | 3.5 | 4.2 |
| Easily embedding assets in the text editor of News Story content type | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 4.1 |
| Story autosaving | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 4.1 |
| Efficiently handing off stories/assets to the next team | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 4 |
| Easily rearranging the embedded assets in the text editor of News Story | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 3.9 |
| Ability to edit from networks other than NBCU_Corp | 5 | 2 | 3.5 | 3.5 |
| Easily embed social media into a story | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3.9 |
| Understanding what each field does (e.g short description vs. shorter description) | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3.8 |
| Receiving notification when the status of a story changes | – | 3 | 3 | 3.67 |
| More visual search results of media items | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3.6 |
| Easily prioritize the list of things to do | – | 3 | 3 | 3.56 |
| Easily share the stories to social media | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3.5 |
| Quickly getting the list of things to do | – | 3 | 3 | 3.44 |
| More visual representation of the assets | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3.33 |
| Visual appearance of the CMS | 2 | 3 | 2.5 | 3 |
| Easily copy and paste stories from other sources | – | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Easily see what the latest published stories are | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3.8 |
| Ability to predict which story/topic would go viral via analytics | – | 2 | 2 | 3.56 |
| Easily look at what other news sources are saying | – | 2 | 2 | 3.33 |
Prioritization Details & Blue Skies
Video Editor
Top 3
- Easily navigate different parts of the CMS
- Needs to juggle many roles, so need to quickly see what’s scheduled & unscheduled, what’s in Europe, go back and forth quickly
- Fast saving
- Lag with everything – takes a long time for the video to show up in the system
- View the videos when they are ready
Blue Sky
- Having it just work, not having to question the ingest process
Other
- See something within the hour
Video Producer
Top 3
- Search Filter
- Too many results for photos
- Ability to do basic photo edit
- Changing the photos for the videos easily
- Being able to access from home
- Work late, and put the video in herself
- Want to change the headline, etc.
Blue Sky
- Accessibility – don’t use it often, but it’s difficult to approach
Stray Observation
- Participants said that they like that they are in the center of everything while doing the Workflow exercise.