VUCAVU was created by the Coalition of Canadian Independent Media Art Distributors (CCIMAD) to support independent media artists and to improve accessibility to artists' works. The seven distributors in the Coalition came together to create an online streaming platform for independent Canadian film, video and art. They needed a vendor to facilitate collaboration between the seven distributors, and to help define the brand and the product.
The brand was established through a series of branding workshops with the distributors: from name generation to overall brand direction.
Through a series of story mapping sessions with the distributors, the product owner, and the scrum team, we defined and refined the product.
Wireframes and designs were created in agile sprints and, ultimately, a robust, evolving style guide was used to ensure consistency.
Each of the seven distributors would have a number of curators who would create groupings of films based on themes, such as "Works by Women" or "Indigenous." We created a platform with a unique login for each curator, allowing them to easily create and manage a wide variety of film content. The groupings can be laid out in different ways to allow for flexibility.
Many of the users of VUCAVU are students or curators, who are looking for very specific content — sometimes as specific as "a 3 minute long, animated film made in 2017, featuring children in Ecuador". Simple but robust filtering and searching was implemented to make it easy for them to find films from an obscure genre or of a specific length.
The platform is customized depending on the visitor's state — registered or non-registered. The priority for non-registered visitors is signing up. We show them groupings of films and allow them to watch trailers to entice them to join, but ultimately the focus is on why they should sign up. For registered visitors, it's about content. We show them newly released or featured content, as well as their current rentals and playlists.
Trailers and full-length films can be watched right on the site. Visitors can also browse image galleries, view additional information about each film, and view recommended related films.
Collaboration with the agile team and the product owner to define the product, responsive website design, collaboration with UX, user testing
Vucavu Online Streaming Platform