Actiongram for HoloLens
In this brief overview video, I explain how Actiongram gives users new creative power
Storytelling with Holograms
In 2015, while I was working on designs for the HoloLens shell, an app development team from the other side of the building reached out looking for creative storytellers to alpha test a new holographic video creation app that was early in development. Always eager to try out a new creative tool, I gladly offered to help.
At that early stage, Actiongram already had a lot going for it: the spatial tracking from HoloLens made it easy to capture videos with digital content placed convincingly in the real world, and the team was already building a library of zany holograms that users could include in their stories.
STRATEGIC SILLINESS
As I was learning about the app, I also wanted to learn about the project's strategy and goals. Even though the release of HoloLens was coming up fast, it was understood that most people would have no opportunity to try it anytime soon. So how, then, could the general public witness, understand, and believe in the power of holograms without experiencing them firsthand? Actiongram aimed to boost awareness of this new technology by putting its power in the hands of talented video creators who could seed the web with delightful (and shareable) holographic stories.
I began work on my first Actiongram video, and despite how magical it felt seeing a life-size holographic zombie mop my kitchen floor, I was struggling to think of stories I was excited to tell with the content. Most of the holograms seemed designed for a specific pre-determined gag, but I didn't want to tell their jokes, I wanted to tell my own jokes. So I tried to get creative with it, finding unexpected and unusual ways to use the content, sometimes dubbing over voiced holograms with my own dialogue.
One of my first Actiongram videos, made before joining the team
The team loved the videos I created, but they loved my feedback and suggestions even more. Over the coming months I spent more and more time with them, providing ideas for the kind of content and features that I would want as a creator. Eventually, they asked if I'd be willing to join their team as Creative Director.
UNDERSTANDING OUR (OTHER) USERS
After joining Actiongram full-time as CD, I needed to understand the needs, workflows, and motivations of the social video creators we wanted to win as users.
I’d meet face-to-face with the talented creators we enlisted into our Inner Circle beta program, I’d study telemetry reports on content and tool usage, and I carefully followed the media and pop-culture trends that often influenced online video creators’ storytelling.
I compiled the insights I was observing, and from that foundation built out a content plan that would better serve our users’ needs.
A few of the content insights I presented to the team
Our future content production cycles would each have a dominant theme and serve as a kit-of-parts for more versatile storytelling. Releases were timed based on when our creators would have the greatest use for the content (Horror during the lead-up to Halloween, for instance).
NEW FEATURES FROM NEW USERS
I also wanted to increase app usage within the team itself, because few other than myself had been using it regularly and I wanted everyone to have a deeper understanding of the product from our customers’ perspective.
So, I started ABWIFF, the Actiongram Bi-Weekly International Film Festival, wherein every sprint we would each share a video we made using the latest features and content. We’d vote on our favorite, and the winner would claim the ridiculous trophy I constructed until needing to defend it the next time around.
Besides being a ton of fun and helping us identify many new bugs, ABWIFF also led to a flood of new feature ideas. Developers who had never created videos with the app were now passionately advocating for proposed tools that would make it easier for them to tell their desired stories.
This led to many app improvements and new capabilities like scene saving, hologram duplication, lighting/color manipulation tools, a variety of hologram playback options, and more.
CELEBRATING OUR COMMUNITY
At the climax of our Inner Circle program, in which talented, up-and-coming creators had each been given a HoloLens to create with for several months, we invited participants from around the country to meet in Palm Springs for one last challenge.
With Actiongram now shipped, it was time for the team to move on to the next project. But the videos live on. Here are a couple of my own ABWIFF submissions:
Holograms can give your neighbors something fun to listen to late at night!
Holograms can help you plan your next home renovation project!