Video Prototype
How can we prompt people to drink water instead of soft drinks?
Storyboarding, Video Shooting, and Editing
HCDE 451 Class Project
1 Week Individual Project
Design
The Water-Drinking Reminding App
I wanted to make a video prototype that encourages people to drink water instead of soft drinks, because soft drinks usually have ingredients that are not good for human’s health. The cell phone app that I made the video on is an existing app called Water Minder, which allows users to keep track of how much water they’ve drunk throughout a day. By using this app, users can have a better idea on both how much water they should drink per day as well as their daily water-drinking progress.
User Scenario
The user scenario that I wanted to demonstrate for this app was that…
Before using the app, the user is used to drink soft drinks when they need hydration.
After the stalling the app, the user starts to intentionally drink pure water, which can keep them hydrated and away from the unhealthy ingredients.
Storyboards
Before Installing the App
Before installing the app, the user drinks cola after exercising and drinks soft drinks when they finished studying. However, the user becomes aware that the sugar, artificial flavors, and other ingredients in the soft drinks are not great for health, and that’s why they installed a phone app to remind them to drink more water.
Storyboard 1–4: Before installing the app, the user consumes soft drink after exercising.
Storyboard 5–8: The user drinks soft drink after finishing work.
After Using the App
After using the app, the user becomes hesitate when they open the refrigerator to look for cola and decides to pick up a bottle of water instead. They also changes to drink more water for hydration because the app reminds them that it’s good for their health.
Storyboard 9–12: After installing the app, the user starts to intentionally drink water instead of soft drink.
Storyboard 13–16: The user gradually grows the habit of drink water
The Video Prototype
The video prototype of a water-drinking reminding app
Analysis
Feedback from Critique
What worked well?
1. Background music: The background music was slow and smooth, and it matches the theme of prompting the audiences to drink more water.
2. The user scenario: The user changes from consuming soft drinks to drinking water, which is a user scenario that makes sense for a water-drinking reminding app.
What could be improved?
1. The plot: Although the story overall makes sense, some feedback that I received was that the “before installing the app” phase of the video takes too much time. If I were to improve it, I will make that part more succinct and use more time to showcase the features on the app.
2. Camera angles: There are some camera angles where it is not entirely clear what is the character is doing. So in my future video prototypes, I will make sure to clearly capture and present the character’s actions.
3. Video editing: The current video editing of the prototype works, but I could improve it by inserting subtitles or animations on to the video to make it easier for audiences to understand and better digest the content.
Reflection
Overall, I enjoyed the video prototyping assignment because it allows me to practice my storyboarding skill and independently shoot and edited videos. One frustration that I encountered was the difficulty of shooting the video with constrained resources. I produced the video prototype on my own and used my cell phone to take the videos. It was challenging to shoot the videos on a phone because not only that the pre-set camera angles are not necessarily ideal but also that it was easy for the cell phone to slide or fall to an unexpected angle, which made me re-took some scenes.
I wish I knew more about how to achieve different camera angles using cell phones. For example, I had an over-the-shoulder camera angle planned in my storyboard, but it was hard for me to find somewhere to set my cell phone to capture the action in my planned angle. Also, I would like to learn more about the effect of different camera angles because the choice of angles can make a lot of difference in the efficiency of conveying information.
In my future video prototypes, I will make sure to spend more time thinking through my storyboards and shot list to better prepare for taking videos. If time allows, I would also like to try out different camera angles to see which one work the best.
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