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Video platform: a customizable, rich media solution | 14

Chapter 4 – Research

4.1 Introduction

The video platform has finally finished, and thankfully it works great and it includes the specified requirements. Below you
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can read how I started in the beginning of my graduation project that I started the 2 of February 2015. For roughly 95
days I have been working on this video platform and during the assignment I have made all kinds of choices, developed
some things in one way and others in another way. Below you can also read why I have made some of the choices that I
have made and how it has affected not only me but also the project. Last but not least, I have done different researches
into the video platform and for these different strategies have been used, you can read it all here.

4.2 Main design

4.2.1 Development

It was the first week at work at the office of MAD Consultancy. This was the beginning of the graduation project for me,
and it was the first week where I would be explained the project in more details. During this first week I had quite some
interviews with the company directors and my company mentor. This was the first time I got introduced to the designer
intern, with whom I was supposed to cooperate in creating a front-end design.

The requirements were discussed in detail, well some of the requirements. The company directors didn’t fully go into
detail with the requirements, they just explained a bunch of requirements that would keep me busy for the beginning, and
later on they would provide me with more detail. The designer intern and I made some agreements with each other: We
decided how the communication would go between us, and what the most efficient ways were to start working. At the
company the directors liked to work with Skype; this was an easy communication tool for within the company. Messaging
each other went easier this way, and there was no need to move away from your computer, thus losing your “work flow”.
Of course the designer and I found this also to be the best tool for our communication.
We decided to split the parts and divide the front-end work; this was the best solution to have our own separate tasks,
which we would design and we would meet and discuss what we had made, on a regular basis. This was the point where I
started making use of the research strategies mentioned in chapter 3, more specifically the field strategy of the DOT
framework. At this point in time it was important to get a front-end design of the website: How it should look, what parts
it had to contain, how the positioning would be of the parts etc. I had quite some information of some of the
requirements, but this was not enough.

I needed to do interviews to get more information. The interviews performed by me, was with the company mentor and
some of the employees at the office. Before the interviews I had made some questions, and I would be making notes of
the answers that they would give me. I asked what annoyed them about YouTube, how I could design some parts, and if
they liked some positions of the website. I made quite some notes of these observations and together with the designer
we discussed how we could design it further. We came with the idea to sketch some of the pages out, and to show each
other what we had made so we could discuss and make changes. We agreed that the designer would design the admin
panel layout, while I would design the front layout pages. We would then compare our drawings and provide feedback.