Roxio MediaBook - Windows 8 Tablet App

Groundbreaking Process and a New OS

Roxio MediaBook - Windows 8 and Android app for tablet and PC

MediaBook is an application that enables users to easily create amazing compositions from their personal photos and videos and publish them as an eBook. Current eBooks have been focused text first with media playing a supporting role.

MediaB will take a different approach to eBooks, by putting visual media (photos & video clips) first, text and audio (in the form of narration and/or background music) will be secondary and a supporting role.

Some of the key features of MediaBook include:

- Arrange photos and videos along the pages of an eBook

- Edit photos and videos

- Apply visual effects to photos and videos

- Add captions

- Add simple text

- Add audio background music

- Add narration

PROBLEM: Creation and publishing of interactive content is changing. The evolution comes from multiple directions – from the traditional print/publishing market where eBooks are now surpassing traditional paper based output as the preferred medium to read content, and also from DVDs.

eBooks have been around for a while, but most of them have been about representing a physical book in electronic form. This means text first, and other media (typically photos and some audio) items second. There was not support for video content until recently.

With the inception of the new ePUB3 interactive eBook format, there is finally a standard format that allows for simple distribution of an electronic book format that can contain the beauty of layout and aesthetics, fused with the support of rich media and interaction beyond what people expect out of eBooks today.

Tablets are the main driving forces behind the explosion of eBook and electronic media consumption since they are portable, convenient, connected and allow a user to carry much more content than what’s available on paper.

While we expect commercial publishers to start to adopt this newer interactive format, we see a huge opportunity to allow consumers to create a new and amazing experiences to showcase their own content without the need to purchase professional layout tools, learn page layout and design or how to script interaction between media items.The product had some powerful features that were adding a layer of complexity to the UI and overall workflow. This product needed to be designed for desktop, tablet, and phones on both Windows and Android OS.

Windows 8 was new, not even released yet. The time frame was compressed in order to be first in the app store. Product Management, UX and Design were in the US, but our engineering resources were in China. Not only did we need to come up with the research to guide and support a new product, but we had to create a brand identity, content strategy (including all custom design templates), create a custom user experience, test and launch.

SOLUTION: We kicked off the project with a 2-week research sprint. I created a screener, interview questions and a research plan. I hired an outside recruiting firm to schedule users, then conducted the contextual inquiries with a colleague. During this period the Product Manager initiated a PRD to start outlining the capabilities and desired feature set for the product.

Once the discovery process was complete, the UX, Product Management and Engineering teams began a dialog. We had been developing in an Agile method, but soon realized that iterations needed to be tightened up. In addition the time lag between US and China began to push the timeline back. I decided to try sketching concepts and wireframes rather than creating annotated wireframes in Omni-graffle. Once the team got used to the loose format, we increased turn around time by 60%. I brainstormed with the Product Manager, then sketched our collaboration, scanned it and emailed it to the engineers. The next day, they had the concept running for a review. We met the September app store deadline, passing all store requirements.

Skills Used:

• Stakeholder interviews
• User research interviews
• Contextual Inquiry
• Task analysis
• Affinity diagramming
• Information Architecture design
• Wireframe, screen flows, storyboarding, task flows
• Iterative user interface design
• User testing
• User experience management
• UX/UI Mentoring
• Creative Direction/Branding

Roxio MediaBook. Brand identity for one of three product variants.

Home screen displaying multiple variants of the creator and reader products.

MediaBook Ultimate Start Screen - this product ships with six design templates.

MediaBook Photo Editor allows users to commit basic edits and apply photo effects to their still photos.

The Narration feature lets users tell the story of a photo or video in their own words.

MediaBook provides robust video editing capabilities for a tablet. Simple edits and effects can be applied on-the-fly.

Video editing is simple with MediaBook. Trim and rotate are the most popular features.

MediaBook Reader is an application that enables users to read and playback ePub3 files.

MediaBook Reader home screen. View books in your bookshelf, see what friends are saying about them, and see what MediaBooks your friends are publishing.