SuperShare • Feb, 2023
Async video reaction & synchronous co-watching video experience
Created a mobile first experience to add video reaction and start synchronised video co-watching experience.
Summary
During my time at SuperShare, I worked on creating experiences to make content consumption more social. The scope of this problem included content of all forms, from feature length documentaries to short form content like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. We came up with two approaches for this problem statement:
Embedding video reactions into short-form content:
While sharing any short-form content, your video reaction gets embedded into the video while sharing.Creating a synchronous co-watching experience:
You can watch videos (from platforms like YouTube) together with your friends.
Problem statement
Today's internet is driven by content consumption, but a decade ago, companies focused on human connections. Now, most companies prioritise content, contributing to a massive loneliness problem. Our project aimed to address loneliness while consuming content, enabling a more social experience without removing content from people's lives.
Solution
Part 1: Video reactions
With research we found an interesting insight: watching the way someone reacts to a piece of content can be just as rewarding as watching the content itself.
Hence we imagined a solution where we could embed the user's reaction while watching short-form content into the video itself. It works as mentioned below:
Start by watching videos on our app with your front camera turned on
Your video reaction gets recorded for every video that you are watching
While sharing a video you get an option to share with or without video
Here's a quick demonstration of the solution through 5 mockups:
Part 2: Co-watching experience
With our second solution we wanted to look at how content watching experiences have been in the past and emulate a more synchronous co-watching environment.
With our Live Rooms feature, we created an experience where you could watch content from any platform with your friends. This feature works in 3 simple steps:
Start by inviting your friends to the live room session on our app
Pick the content you'd like to watch together with your friends
Enjoy the watch party and keep the fun going by queuing more content
Here's a quick demonstration of the solution through 5 mockups:
Part 3: Async-Sync bridge
Looking at applications like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces we quickly realised that people no longer have as much free time in their lives post Covid-19. Hence we needed something that seems serendipitous in connecting people.
With our Async-Sync bridge, you would get a notification every time someone watches the content that you shared. This will allow you to fire a co-watching experience spontaneously.
You can read more about how this experience scales with more users below.
Start by inviting your friends to the live room session on our app
Pick the content you'd like to watch together with your friends
Enjoy the watch party and keep the fun going by queuing more content
Here's a quick demonstration of the solution through 5 mockups:
Prototype videos
Video reactions: user turning their camera on before begining to browse.
Video reactions: users browsing videos, sharing videos with friends with video reactions.
Living room: user inside a living room, selecting content to watch, watching content live.
Async-Sync bridge: user getting a nudge when friend is watching a video they shared
Additional features
Playlist
Right after we finished building the live rooms feature, we realised that adding a new video after the current video gets over is a irritating process. Hence, it was natural for people to want to queue various videos that they can watch without any interruption.
So we worked on the V2 of the live rooms feature where users can queue and order video according to their choice.
Live tab
Having built the feature, the next step was to solve for cold start problem. We realised that all our new users won't have their friends on this platform on day 1 and hence it was crucial to allow people to experience the feature without the constraint.
So we designed live tab, a dedicated section in the app, where you can see publicly listed live rooms. These were going to be moderated rooms to ensure a good experience for the user.
Conclusion
The idea of making internet more social is something that has taken centre stage with every passing year. More companies are focussing on opportunities to bring back the true human connection.
Our concept attempted to make content watching experience more social and the same idea can be extended to various forms of content such as reading an article, shopping and much more.
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