Overview

Blinder allows four participants to attend any recorded video interviews. It was identified some participants would join a video call but hardly speak. Upon customer feedback, we discovered these participants were acting as a “producer” similar to live TV, where an individual would direct the guests and hosts of a show.

These individuals wanted to participate in a video interview to guide the conversation, but didn’t want to be recorded.

Techniques

Userflow
UI design

User interviews
User journey mapping
Competitor analysis

Problem

The discovery introduced a new user type but knew little of their behaviours.

We needed to validate:

The workflow of a producer in preparation for an interview.
Identify the permissions and abilities a producer should have in an online interview.

User Research

User interviews were conducted with five customers from both talent management and producer backgrounds. They were asked about their processes, difficulties and concerns when working with producers. Through the discussions, we identified the communication between the producer and the manager is the key success for a successful interview.

Insights

The producer is involved in all processes before an interview is finalized. Therefore, when a video call is scheduled in Blinder there is no more organizational work required from all parties involved.

In particular multiple interviewees mentioned the communication in an online interview between producer and the other participants (the hosts and guest) , were the most important. An example was given where a producer used WhatsApp to text with the host to avoid extra post production work, as time is of essence to publish an interview to the media.

“You talk and you’re looking down at a camera and you just keep talking and you don’t realize that someone wants to interject a lot of things. It’s not like when you’re in the room with someone and you can’t get the cues, the body language cues that we’ve got to wrap it up or anything like that.”

— Producer interviewee

Despite the close relationship between the producer and the manager, their goals and motivations are different.

Blinder is used in the scheduling and recording phases of an interview. Despite the close relationship between managers and producers, they each have different motivations and goals. The insights reveal producers are willing to use different methods to communicate as it is crucial to the success of an interview.

Competitor Analysis

Riverside FM is one of few online recording products with a producer role available. The application is more complex as they enable producers to join by link invite. Whereas Blinder will only let paid Blinder customers use the producer role. Despite this Riverside FM uses the same tools to manage the producer, such as non-recording for producers, the microphone and camera permissions as tools.

Riverhead FM enables users multiple ways to join a video call as a producer

Riverside FM producer has a clear label to differentiate

Producers can choose to turn their camera off and communicate through audio

Producer Design

We incorporated the producer experience into the existing host user flow. Overall the scheduling and recording pathways are similar but with additional reminders to reinforce the difference between the two roles. These included tags and drop downs in specific parts of the scheduling experience to remind users they are in the producer role.

The purple line shows the Producer scheduling is the same as the Host.

The producer role has the same permissions as the host but with restrictions

Can join a video call only through audio
A call must have more than two participants excluding the producer to enable the role
The producer is never recorded, therefore they are represented in the call through a speech bubble.

This feature has been launched and is an enterprise feature only.

Blinder Producer