Designing Control Surfaces for Video Editing: A Human-Centred Approach
Kuitunen, Mika (2022)
Kuitunen, Mika
2022
Tietotekniikan DI-ohjelma - Master's Programme in Information Technology
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-05-11
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202204253500
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202204253500
Tiivistelmä
Video editing is the task of compiling media of various types to form a cohesive piece that tells a story. While simple video editing can be done even on modern smartphones, complex projects containing media from multiple sources and requiring more processing power are done on desktop with non-linear editors (NLEs), editing software that allows the user to easily adjust any part of the sequence. This is a task that requires both creativity and technical knowledge to solve the problem of storytelling and convert the idea into the final cuts. A control surface is a physical user interface that facilitates the use of a specific software, and for video editing the most common control surfaces are the keyboard and mouse.
This Master's thesis examines video editing control surfaces from a human-centred perspective through a human-centred design process. The research problem consists of three research questions: (1) What is important to the user in a video editing control surface, (2) What is the right degree of specificity for a control surface and (3) What design considerations does the task of video editing cause. The questions were answered by developing a new control surface concept using the human-centred design process, and evaluating both the process and its results.
Initial context were gathered via a literature review and a contextual inquiry, which produced personas for the potential user and some tentative heuristics that could be used to evaluate the UX of existing control surfaces. The heuristics were developed into a full set through a formalized process and three different control surfaces were evaluated to find potential issues and ideas for a new product concept. A prototype of a new control surface was created and evaluated through an online survey, and finally, the design guidelines for video editing control surfaces were formed.
The results of the research indicate that there might not be a need for editing-specific control surfaces as the keyboard and mouse are sufficient for most users, even experienced professional editors. The actions of modern NLEs are designed to be completed without specialized control surfaces and for many tasks, a button press is already an efficient interaction. The users are willing to spend time building muscle memory for their tasks, so the creative problem-solving becomes the bottleneck instead of the execution of each action.
The heuristics created during the research worked well and could be used to evaluate physical user interfaces in other contexts as well. If a new video editing control surface is designed, the most important considerations are customizability, well-working combination of hardware, software and integration with the NLE, and allowing the user to memorize the most common actions while being able to find less common actions easily. The users' deep level of expertise with their current software affects the results and while novel interaction types were not found to be interesting in this research, the result may change if NLEs with better support for new controls are created.
This Master's thesis examines video editing control surfaces from a human-centred perspective through a human-centred design process. The research problem consists of three research questions: (1) What is important to the user in a video editing control surface, (2) What is the right degree of specificity for a control surface and (3) What design considerations does the task of video editing cause. The questions were answered by developing a new control surface concept using the human-centred design process, and evaluating both the process and its results.
Initial context were gathered via a literature review and a contextual inquiry, which produced personas for the potential user and some tentative heuristics that could be used to evaluate the UX of existing control surfaces. The heuristics were developed into a full set through a formalized process and three different control surfaces were evaluated to find potential issues and ideas for a new product concept. A prototype of a new control surface was created and evaluated through an online survey, and finally, the design guidelines for video editing control surfaces were formed.
The results of the research indicate that there might not be a need for editing-specific control surfaces as the keyboard and mouse are sufficient for most users, even experienced professional editors. The actions of modern NLEs are designed to be completed without specialized control surfaces and for many tasks, a button press is already an efficient interaction. The users are willing to spend time building muscle memory for their tasks, so the creative problem-solving becomes the bottleneck instead of the execution of each action.
The heuristics created during the research worked well and could be used to evaluate physical user interfaces in other contexts as well. If a new video editing control surface is designed, the most important considerations are customizability, well-working combination of hardware, software and integration with the NLE, and allowing the user to memorize the most common actions while being able to find less common actions easily. The users' deep level of expertise with their current software affects the results and while novel interaction types were not found to be interesting in this research, the result may change if NLEs with better support for new controls are created.