Autodesk: Shotgun X
A wholesale redesign of an application being used daily by over 50,000 users
Shotgun Coordinator interface
Executive Summary
Shotgun was a 10 year old SaaS product with over 50,000 customers. While the platform was best in breed, they were seeing upstart competitors start competing on new features and a better UI. Shotgun revolutionized the way media and entertainment professionals collaborated on projects, winning multiple industry awards including a technical Emmy.. With its intuitive platform, filmmakers can easily manage visual effects development from start to finish - all in one place.
My team was tasked with the ambitious goal of reinventing Shotgun's core platform, aiming to optimize the onboarding experience for new users, as well as removing the complexity for existing users. The obstacles we faced included feature-driven design decisions, information density, hierarchy issues and a lack of consistent UI conventions, which all impacted our ability to create a unified visual language.
Over a one-year span, we successfully redesigned how projects were created, organized and assigned through an improved user experience that revolutionized Shotgun as both a platform and ecosystem at large.
Our first sub-project was how users were introduced to Shotgun for the first time and asked to create a project from scratch.
Through research, we identified several opportunities for improvement. We concepted, wireframed, and then developed an InVision prototype focused on the workflow of setting up a project with a simplified experience.
Before we could dive into designing a flow for creating a project, we had to get clear on the things a project contains. So we created some initial concepts where we blocked out with quick and dirty wireframes illustrating the high-level areas of a project.
Process
Competitive Analysis
User Research
Wireframing
Interaction Design
Prototyping
Roles
Crateive Director
Product Designer
Duration
52 Weeks
Deliverables
Test Script
StoryMap
Design Principles
Problem
The platform was initially created 10 yrs ago and was showing its age. Originally built to be utilized by large film studios, it hadn’t changed to provide tools for smaller and more nimble studios like Netflix and streamers.
Shotgun's platform of products had been steadily increasing, causing their experience to become sluggish and difficult for new users. This led to a massive amount of "design debt," which negatively impacted the onboarding experience; consequently, prospective customers were left confused and frustrated as they struggled through an overwhelming setup process that required too many steps. As existing users found themselves spending excessive amounts of time configuring projects in Shotgun, it was perceived only beneficial for large-scale operations rather than smaller ones - we needed to make changes fast!
Shotgun had an onboarding and setup experience that was leaving users feeling lost and confused, with too many steps to complete their project setup, along with using it. Worse yet- once they completed each step, there wasn't any guidance on how to progress forward! This discouraged new customers from using the product while also making existing users frustrated at having dedicated so much of their time just to setup.
Redesigning the Shotgun platform(SaaS) was an incredibly involved experience. The platform encompassed of:
multiple web applications
3 desktop programs (Windows/Mac OSX/Linux)
A fully functional mobile iOS application
3rd party integrations (with interfaces) into multiple applications, including:
3DMaxPremiere Pro
Nuke
Photoshop CC
After Effects
And more
All in all - building this intricate product required extensive research, design, and development from our team. Suffice it to say; the platform has a complex and complicated amount of experience for multiple users.
Coordinators interface - looks like Microsoft Excel for a reason.
Process
We started the redesign process like any other project, and conducted an extensive amount of user research, from 1-on-1 interviews to site visits, and contextual inquiry.
Multiple Personas = Multiple Experiences
To ensure all Shotgun users can get the most out of our platform, we conducted extensive research to better understand their individual workflows and needs. From big studios to small FX houses, dozens of interviews enabled us to craft detailed personas enabling us to tailor experiences that feel like part of a unified whole while meeting each user's unique requirements.
With so many different users, the complexity and size of the platform, we realized we had to tackle the redesign in stages, and only update features being used by a specific persona. We didn’t want to have a completely “Frankenstein” application while the redesign was happening over several quarters, especially with such a vocal and rabid user base.
After exploring different studios and workflows, we uncovered key insights about the needs of our target personas:
Personas
We converted technical specs into loose personas.
Shotgun has a wealth of data to extract, analyze, and visualize to provide meaningful information. We recognized an opportunity and had already done some research by the this project got started. We condensed their research into digestible personas to gain alignment and define our scope.
Key User Personas
Redesign
My team was tasked with the ambitious goal of reinventing Shotgun's core platform, aiming to optimize the onboarding experience for new users, as well as removing the complexity for existing users. The obstacles we faced included feature-driven design decisions, information density, hierarchy issues and a lack of consistent UI conventions, which all impacted our ability to create a unified visual language.
Over a one-year span, we successfully redesigned how projects were created, organized and assigned through an improved user experience that revolutionized Shotgun as both a platform and ecosystem at large.
Our first sub-project was how users were introduced to Shotgun for the first time and asked to create a project from scratch.
Through research, we identified several opportunities for improvement. We concepted, wireframed, and then developed an InVision prototype focused on the workflow of setting up a project with a simplified experience.
Before we could dive into designing a flow for creating a project, we had to get clear on the things a project contains. So we created some initial concepts where we blocked out with quick and dirty wireframes illustrating the high-level areas of a project.
Example conceptual wireframes
To ensure supervisors, producers, and managers could stay on top of their projects with ease, a standalone task-tracking app was created to streamline key actions like setup and assignment. This would give users the tools needed for the smooth completion of tasks.
The initial spec included their key actions in each area:
Project
Break down a project into entities / steps / tasks
Organize into a hierarchy
Assign tasks
Get an overview of status
Quickly find what you’re looking fo
TasksSee your team and the tasks they’re assigned
Assign tasks by drag and drop
Change task dates by drag and drop
MediaView the latest media on everything you’re tracking
Organize media into playlists
Share playlists with clients
Organize media into cuts
MilestonesCreate milestones on the project
Change milestone dates by drag and drop
Organize tasks into milestones
Change task status in milestones by drag and drop
Share milestones with a client
Conceptual wireframes
Shotgun Storymap
Research
After several successful rounds of user research, we conducted further testing to evaluate the viability of our prototypes. Participants were asked to experience setting up projects and assigning artists before giving their valuable feedback on the project.
Our efforts yielded great insights, which would be imperative for improving the platform’s product roadmap moving forward.
Design
Our efforts yielded great insights which would be imperative for making improvements in the platform’s product roadmap moving forward.
We were able to gain tremendous insights from our users, particularly regarding the new UI's cleanliness and linear workflow. Notably, they raved about the media import flows and enhanced playback abilities throughout Shotgun screens.
Users were able to easily review their entire project/pipeline at a glance with the ability to zoom in and out on specific sections as desired, quickly assess their progress by seeing how many items are ongoing, needing reviews, etc., all without losing sight of important details.
Notice a theme yet?
Users were craving a more direct and more consistent experience.
Supervisors were looking for a single view that provided an overview of the necessary information, without overwhelming them with too much detail. Although they appreciated having more detailed insight easily accessible at their fingertips through clicking on whatever was needed to get further details.
To optimize our user experience, we implemented Shotgun Design System and offered the ability to switch themes. We modernized the look by offering a dark UI theme for Supervisors/Artists and light version for Coordinators – giving customers an aesthetic that was similar across their other applications.
We took the existing Shotgun and all of the redesign work we’d done in the first half of the year and tripled the team size, then split it in two, with one group working on the platform and the other working on the platform design system.
The Shotgun team set out on a mission to improve the UX for newcomers and existing users alike.
Our ultimate objective? To make life easier for everyone, but with more of an emphasis placed on our new users. This challenging endeavor was divided into two main parts:
Project setup, organization, and tracking
How might we improve the UX around creating new projects, getting your stuff in and organized, and getting it assigned? Our goal was to design the best possible experience for doing this in 5 minutes or less. At this stage, we kept it pretty open. We played with changing existing functionality and adding new features. We tried many scenarios so we could prove we picked the best one.
Global and project navigation
Once we determined the best possible project setup workflow, how does that fit in our existing navigation model? What needs to change? How is navigation impacting new users getting started and existing users finding their way to features they need to use daily?
Every day, our goal was to improve the existing product, but not at the expense of current user retention (if existing users stop using the app because of changes we made, that isn’t good).
Example Shotgun screens