Skits is a video sharing platform where the users post short videos maximum of 12 seconds and get paid for the videos. The project skits had two parts to the project one was the user end application where the users record the video and post in on the platform and the other end of the application is limited to the advertisers. The advertisers can create ad campaigns and start their campaigns by engaging the users on the platform. These advertisers mainly included the marketing executives from the brands who enrolled on skits for creating an ad campaign.
One of the major challenges while before starting the project was understanding the marketing executives and the way they use the system was much different from the way a regular user uses the application. while talking to one of the users during the user interview sessions I understood that these marketing people have very less but the data that was about to be showing on the system was very huge so while designing the platform I took at most care to avoid unnecessary data on the screen and to care to identify the information seamlessly by using images and charts.
I served as the product designer for skits along with the mobile application I also designed the advertisers dashboard and as well as the branding and marketing of the skits application. After defining the overall product and after strategizing the marketing plan, we went ahead and planned the monetization of the platform. Once a brand features a video, users on Skits can promote the video to start earning coins, while the creator of the video earns 10 coins each time the video is promoted. Coin balances below 5,000 can be redeemed as mobile airtime, while balances of 5,000 and above can be redeemed as cash. Each coin is equivalent to N1. working with the business analysts and coming up with the monetization plan was one of the most challenging tasks in the overall project. After ideating and after multiple sketches of the wireframe, we wanted to make subtle micro-interactions while designing the skits application. After prototyping multiple ideas and testing we froze very subtle interactions that are scalable across multiple devices and all platforms.
After designing and deploying the project one of the first brands that were enrolled on the skits platform was coke, the skits app was confined to the African countries coke wanted to launch an ad campaign which could engage the users in posting videos of them while they have a good time with there friends having a coke. The platform was well received in the market and with the real-time analytic data of the platform I was able to understand where the users spent most of the time and could identify where the problem areas were.
One of the major challenges while designing enterprise application is the continuous changing of the business requirement and the environments to overcome this challenge I understood that the flexibility and the scalability of design plays a vital role while designing enterprise applications/.
Skits was one of the most challenging applications that I designed in my overall career, right from the engagement of the audience to designing the overall system where the users and take the money was like a roller coaster ride. Soon after the launch of the project the subtle and the unique idea of making money by being socially worked out well in Nigeria. Many local newspapers promoted the app a lot for its unique idea and the simple execution.
