Introduction

BeScene was born out of a group brainstorm in an entrepreneurship class that I had in graduate school. The concept was so well received that I pitched it in a regional business model competition, which resulted in a 1st place win with investment capital and a full-ride graduate scholarship.

Ultimately, I led BeScene through two accelerator programs, raised ~$75,000, and developed two Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) that reached private beta testing while maintaining 100% founder ownership.

I did not study design in college, so this project did not follow a traditional design process or framework. I became the sole designer for BeScene out of necessity, and it was professionally the best thing to ever happen to me.

The experience gained and lessons learned from building BeScene have been nothing short of invaluable. I believe there are few experiences in life that will teach you more about yourself and what it takes to build something than actually getting out and doing it. This was that kind of experience.

Project Background

There’s a shift happening in the digital marketing space. Video is the fastest growing and most engaging form of content, but brands are limited in how they can capitalize on this.

  • The average consumer streams more than 1 hour of content per day. That same consumer spends over $1,500 per year on online purchases.
  • Brands are limited to low conversion ads and must maintain a minimum threshold of clicks / views / subscribers to fully monetize their content.

This left me with a serious question… Why can’t you shop directly from the videos you watch?

As a solution, BeScene created two proprietary software applications, “Studio” and “View” that work together to make video content shoppable!

“Studio” is a desktop Shopify app that allows content creators and eCommerce brands to tag products to their videos. Therefore, turning their content into a shopping opportunity. Meanwhile, “View” is a web browser extension that allows video viewers to discover and purchase the products they see while they watch.

Design Challenges

  • Create a simple eCommerce experience with a streamlined purchase process where users can shop the videos they watch without redirection to an external sources.
  • Allow users to search for brands and products of interest.
  • Incentivize users to download and keep coming back for repeat use.

Kickoff

Starting back in graduate school, our student team wanted to create an add-on / plugin for Netflix that would allow viewers to purchase items directly from what they watch.

Over the duration of building BeScene, we leaned heavily into qualitative research to learn as much as we could about the video and eCommerce industries. This included online and in-person survey’s, one-on-one interviews, moderated focus groups, and usability studies at the higher fidelity stages of product development.

So many questions, both known and unknown, had to be answered to make this concept work. Not just product related questions, but business model, partnerships, and supply chain as well. These are some of the key questions we asked ourselves;

How will viewers want to interact with the products they see in the videos they watch?

What product details must be presented to move a viewer from browsing to completion of a purchase?

How do we connect with streaming services and work with them to integrate with their platforms?

How will products be sourced and paired with the right video and timestamp?

How will performance of conversions and sales be tracked?

After a lot of research and many conversations with industry veterans, we realized how difficult it would be to work directly with streaming services. They were protective of their platforms and not incentivized to work with us. So, we decided to pivot by creating our own shopping platform that would work on top of existing streaming services. What follows is the development of that pivot… AKA… BeScene.

Case studies for both of BeScene’s apps are explorable on this site. However, this page will specifically focus on “View”. You can learn more about “Studio” here.

Additionally, note that BeScene “Studio” and “View” were developed simultaneously. Some content will be repeated or shared across both case studies.

Research

A lot of data and feedback was collected from the multiple forms of qualitative research conducted for BeScene “View”. This was instrumental in validation of the shoppable video concept, which gave the team confidence to move forward on the venture. We learned that the younger generations (Millennials and GenZ) have the greatest understanding and interest in shoppable video. Check out the original survey questionnaire and organized data below:

Meet the Users

These personas were developed from the research and conversations with stakeholders and prospective beta testers. Condensing down to these two personas helped me imagine possible use case scenarios that  BeScene’s users may encounter. This provided clarity about user pain points and helped me keep them in mind when designing solutions.

Competitive Analysis

Finding competitors to BeScene was a challenge in the early days of the venture. Shoppable video was a new concept to the marketplace at the time. So, research was an ongoing procress throughout the entire duration of the venture. Everyone was building in stealth mode and very hard to find. Over time, competitors came out of hiding and we discovered them with Google search phrases like “Shoppable video”, “Live Shopping”, and “Universal Shopping Cart”.

The shoppable video space is still quite new to North America, even though it has grown a lot since BeScene started. These are a few companies that we felt BeScene “View” would compete against. They are varied in their product offerings, but none have a complete solution like “View” was built to accomplish.

BeScene’s Key Differentiators

AI that automatically identifies shoppable products within a video.

All shoppable products that are associated with a video are presented to the user.

Complete purchases without redirection

Users can purchase the products they see while they watch. No more rerouting to an external site to complete a purchase.

Earn cash for tagging products

Users can self source unidentified products and earn affiliate commissions for sales after their product tag is verified.

Information Architecture (IA)

“View” started with a rough user flow. I studied many eCommerce shopping experiences to see what features are key to  a seamless and successful online shopping experience. I identified that search, shopping cart / checkout, and a user account are of high importance.

Doing this allowed me to understand the depth of product that had to be created. It also started the conversation on potential user interactions and use cases at each step of the product experience.

As the “View” product developed, user feedback and team design reviews highlighed multiple routes into the app.

  • Clicking the “View” extension icon to open the app.
  • Clicking a product in a video automatically opens the app to the specifc product page.

Feedback and Research also dictated that the login / sign up should happen later on to reduce the potential of user drop off.

To account for these points, an updated user flow was created.

Fidelity Mockups

Low Fidelity

After a lot of research and a full understanding of the user flow, I was ready to mockup the “View” interface.

Many use case questions were asked at this stage. Two of the major questions were:

  • What happens if a product cannot be found?
  • What incentivizes a user to keep coming back?

This pushed us to develop a manual product tagging tool for the user. We solved this by associating product affiliate codes with manual product tags. Therefore incentivizing the user to tag products to earn cash. We also developed a point based rewards system where users could earn discounts towards purchases.

Style Guide

I developed a visual system inspired by modern, simple, and seamless online shopping experiences seen on countless brand websites. This gives “View” a fresh, clean, and fun but premium energy.

High Fidelity

Finally, “View” was brought to life!

Accessibility Considerations

  • High contrast colors are used between the background, text, and buttons in consideration of users with limited visual abilities.
  • Screen reader accessibility is always kept in mind with the use of alt text for imagery.
  • Visual hierarchy is used throughout the application with use of clear headings and dividers within various sections.

Handoff with Development

  • File names, layer names, and screen names are always aligned with each other and kept simple.
  • Mockups are packaged together to best show and understand the user journey.
  • I discuss fidelity and feasibility of all designs with developers.
  • I share visual style guides and grid systems with all deliverables
  • I maintain an agile project management style checklist of all cases, features, and user flows to be designed and delivered.
  • I keep communications and ongoing collaboration as a top priority.  

Design Iteration

“View” went through several iterations across the entire product before reaching a final design candidate.

Design Challenge 1 – Shoppable Video

“View” provided an innovative eCommerce experience with a streamlined purchase process that allowed users to shop the videos they watch without redirection to an external site.

Design Challenge 2 – Search

BeScene’s goal was to become a one stop shop for quick purchases from video. While a user is watching, they could browse the “Search” tab to shop for popular items or from stores of interest. Search would also be driven by what brands a user follows, as well as their previous viewing, search, and purchase history.

Design Challenge 3 – Incentivize Users

Users needed a strong reason to download the “View” extension and keep coming back. Repeat use was incentivized with affiliate commission payouts for manual product tagging. This allowed users to tag unknown products in the videos they watch. A verified tag would become associated with an affiliate code. Then, an affiliate commission on all future sales of a product would be credited to the user with the original tag.

What Would be Next?

More User Testing

Unfortunately, “View” was not tested beyond live prototype demos and non-moderated usability studies. People have an overall positive and intuitive sentiment towards “View”. However, we did not reach full validation on the product with beta testers.

Had development continued, we would have conducted further user interviews, explored edge cases, and work through technical constraints with the development team.

Measuring Success

If “View” were to be completely developed and shipped into the market, we would track a lot of metrics including:

  • Downloads
  • Total accounts
  • Monthly active users
  • Time spent in app
  • Number of products purchased
  • Number of products tagged

 

Startup Lessons Learned

1.) Skill Sets & Resources – By the end of BeScene, the team no longer had the right mix of skillsets nor the financial resources to compete in the space.

BeScene got caught in a chicken and egg scenario where more traction was required to get investment, but more investment was needed to get traction.

2.) Industry Connections – The team lacked the industry experience and connections that were needed get the business off the ground.

3.) Ambition – Coaching and mentorship in our accelerator programs made us realize how ambitious BeScene’s platform was. BeScene’s products had large feature sets that required each other to create value for the marketplace. This turned out to be too complex of a business model, which was not well received by stakeholders.

Startup Takeaways

  • Heavier research on needed skill sets prior to execution of a venture.
  • Establish clear expectations of all team members from day one and be fast to address issues when expectations are not met.
  • Ensure that no single team member is wearing too many hats.
  • Identify and solve a single problem for one specific audience within a market where you have connections and expirtise.
  • Create a single solution that is valuable on its own. No added software required.

Overall Takeaways

In the end, a perfect storm of events led to a team decision to close the doors on BeScene.

In this experience, I taught myself to create with design programs like Adobe Xd, Ai, Id, and Figma. I mocked up and prototyped countless variations of features and screens, ran weekly design reviews with my team and stakeholders, managed sprints via Trello project management boards, and worked directly with my development team to create MVPs from my designs.

BeScene was perhaps the best thing to professionally happen to me. I had become the sole product designer of this venture out of necessity and curiosity to explore an unknown skill set. Little did I know at the time that a curiosity for design would help me discover that it’s my true passion and career focus.

 

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