Description

Concept Development, Design and UX and Testing of a New Video AdTech Unit to Replace The Youtube “Skip Ad” Button.

Example: Appletiser® - Choose one

Request

Conduct research, innovate, and design a product for a series of global patents related to interactive video products for mobile devices.

Situation

I served as a Principal Product UX/UI Designer at Fiinex. During that time, Urban Marketing, an Australian-Japanese marketing agency, sought our help to innovate a product for their pending patents. The agency was close to securing global patent rights for a mobile-only video interactive-interrupt concept, which they planned to convert into new products. This intellectual property (IP) was rooted in work they had previously done for a client in Japan.

Task

My role was to develop new products using this IP. This included defining use cases with clear, user-friendly examples of the user experience and interfaces that demonstrated how the content could be managed by a customer, such as an advertising agency. The goal was to showcase something that could be built as a proof of concept within a three-month timeframe.

Action(s)

To understand the patent and its potential applications, I conducted a series of technology research sessions. I aimed to understand the intent behind it, the types of applications the team considered viable, and the markets they were targeting. During this research, I discovered that the patent had broader implications that extended beyond just advertising. It had the potential to impact platforms like Youtube, especially on mobile devices.

The research revealed that the market had very few competitors, and none of them had protected IP. With this knowledge, I generated a list of concepts and reviewed them with the team through a series of presentations. One concept, which we named "TappNGo", stood out as being universally viable with multiple possible applications on a single system. These included advertising surveys, political polling in video advertising, trivia, and education qualification testing. After defining and designing a structure for the system, I presented it to stakeholders and our engineering team.

Additionally, I suggested that our patent might prevent Youtube from releasing a similar solution on mobile devices. I recommended that we present our concept to Google as a potential replacement for the Youtube "Skip Advertisement" feature. This would transform a negative into an advertising opportunity, where viewers could acknowledge a preference (i.e., which of two colors is preferred) over the ad, instead of just skipping it.

Result

My proposal to replace the "Skip" button with the TappnGo concept for ads, polls, A/B testing, trivia, and education was well received. It was easy to understand and present to their agency, government, and education customers, among other outlets. The process was even proposed as a new potential web advertising unit. A TappnGo ad platform was created and tested in multiple markets, and it received investment support from the Australian government under the name "TappnEd".