2020 work experience

BEAT

Shoot AR Game Videos with Your Friends

overview

‘BEAT’ is an AR video social platform where users invite friends and record AR game videos while interacting through features like
"Live Comments" and "Gif Memes."

Through this project, I developed product thinking skills to identify new market opportunities and hard skills in interface design and prototyping.

Scroll to Outcome ↓

Project Type

Proposal Project

my Role

Solo Project
as a Product Design Intern —

Product Thinking, User Research,

UXUI Design, Interaction Prototyping

Solo Project
as a Product Design Intern —

Product Thinking, User Research,

UXUI Design, Interaction Prototyping

Tools

Adobe XD

After Effects

Keynote

Adobe XD

After Effects

Keynote

timeline

3 weeks (July 2020)

background

About SNOW of NAVER

I had the opportunity to work with SNOW team. SNOW is an AR camera app used by over 280 million people around the world. Also, it is especially beloved by Gen Z users for its facial recognition effects and beauty retouch filters.

More about SNOW Corp↗

Images from the official SNOW website

project goal

Create a new AR video platform using SNOW's game effects

"We are finding a new AR market opportunity!"

At that time, SNOW team's objective was to discover a new market opportunity, going beyond the traditional use of AR effects for beauty purposes and, instead, creating a social connecting AR experience that actively engages users.

I became involved in this initiative where they were planning to leverage game effects. The game effects allow users to play games on AR effects, creating a lot of potential for business growth. Since the launch of AR effects production tools such as Spark AR, the variety and creativity of game effects expanded significantly.

Games created by users

Games controlled by motion

Games for multiple players

User research

Game Effects were used more often for recording, but fewer videos were actually uploaded compared to other effects.

To achieve the project goal, I began dissecting user data related to game effects. During this process, I discovered a notable fact: while users were actively recording videos using game effects, they were not posting the videos. This led me to believe that if we could find a way to leverage these recorded videos, it might open up new market opportunities.

Monthly recording volume

Beauty

100

Game

Distortion

Monthly uploading volume

Beauty

100

Distortion

Game

Why don’t users post videos using game effects?

To find out the answer for this question, I conducted context inquiries and in-depth user interviews.

findings

“I don’t post videos using game effects because the purpose of filming is to play a game, not to create a video in which I look good."

hypothesis

Inviting friends to play game effects together can attract Gen Z users, and 'score ranking' can boost filming videos among close friends.

initial design

explore effects

Home feed shows preview videos with game effects and users can select one to play.

invite friends

Users can send invitations to a group of friends, or start a game with random people.

Add new group

Quick start

⚡️

Monkey Besties

Food Fighters

🐵

🍽

Play with groups
have been added before.

Play with groups
have been added
before.

Play with random people.

Play with random
people.

shooting together

When everyone enters the game, recording starts with the game effect.

competing scores

After the round is over, users can see the ranking and play one more round.

Testing

Testing the usability of the prototype

I recruited a group of close friends to see if users utilize the prototype as intended.

participants

a group of close friends

instruction

Be located in each other's home.
Choose 2 effects.
Play them 3 times.

I observed users leaving the prototype app to the messenger app included with each other as soon as the game was over. They shared funny screenshots that they captured during playing and reacted through texting. After getting back to the prototype, they didn’t watch their video again.

Findings

Chat interaction right after the game playing is essential.

They saved the most hilarious moment as a meme.

iterations

Live comments

As soon as the game is over, users can leave comments and emojis on the funny moment of the video.

And then, when they replay the video, the comments and emojis appear the right where they have left them.

meme gifs

Users can select a part of video that they want to save as a gif meme, and the gifs are going to be saved in their group room.

next step

Next step to the business model

With the outcomes of my project, I also proposed business models based on which NAVER can make profits through AR effects.

Advertisement fee

A lot of clients produce AR effects incorporating their products as an advertisement tool. AR effects have more advantages than video and image ads, since they encourage users to engage more by game playing. BEAT can receive ad fees through producing and displaying the AR effects ads.

Ads effect fee

Ads effect displaying

Ads Client

AR effects ads that users can play game related to their products.

Effects sales commission

The general users can be an AR effect creator by Creator Studio, an AR effect production tool. For these effect creators, BEAT can open the market to sell their creative effects and can charge creators a sales commission fee.

Takeaways

Leveling up as a well-rounded designer
who can turn 0 to 1.

Over a short period of time, I was supposed to find market opportunities turn them into an app prototype, and convince stakeholders, which was an incredibly intensive process. It was a 0 to 1 experience that I could level up as a product designer who can put her product thinking skills into actual work.