Streamlining User Education:
Reducing Clicks and Decision-Making
Blings Extension for Adobe After Effects
The Adobe extension is designed to seamlessly integrate into the video creation process in After Effects. It enables creators to render and upload videos in MP5 format to the online Blings playground.
Having extensively researched other After Effects extensions and considering the interface's alignment with the robust features of After Effects, I've determined that the design should prioritize minimal functionality.
The emphasis should solely be on rendering the project, with other tools, such as project settings, kept out for a cleaner and more focused user experience.
In the first versions of the extension, users were assigned the manual creation and naming of scenes. This led to user confusion, as multiple scene creations and scene overrides occurred accidentally.
In the subsequent steps, users would utilize the online playground to establish connections between layers, data, and interactivity.
Comprehending the relationship hierarchy of:
project > composition = scene > layers > connectors > data
was crucial for users' success.
I presented this observation to the PM, and we subsequently supported it with data from screen recordings of users.
Understading project structure
Our initial step was to secure approval from R&D to technically shift scene creation to the back end of the extension. This adjustment spared users from manually creating scenes and mitigate issues related to renaming mistakes and overrides.
I now deep-dived into understanding the new flow to establish the composition-to-scene change we wanted to implement.
Moving the scene creation to the backend
Ultimately by removing scene creation, the focus of the functionality shifted exclusively to rendering compositions. This not only spared users from having to understand the concept of a scene but also paved the way for introducing numerous additional functionalities all centered around the rendering of compositions
Result
