Mengming Luo | mengmingluo.com
ChronoViz Web is a multi-video annotation tool that augments ethnographers' ability to observe from multiple angles. I explore video-coding patterns to observe, annotate, and analyze.
Case study under construction. Slide deck with detailed design rationale in Figma.
DESIGN LAB — Human-Centered eXtended Intelligence Research Lab
Mentor: Steven Rick
Duration: Spring 2020 - Winter 2021 | Ongoing, Long-Term Research Project
Skills: Interaction Design, Front-End Development, Figma, HTML/CSS, JavaScript
<aside> 🖋️ My Role As the sole project contributor, I played the roles of both designer and developer — designing interface patterns, exploring interactions, and developing an early prototype.
</aside>
Ethnographers (behavioral researchers) often explore behavior by videotaping human interactions from multiple angles. Afterwards they synthesize their findings by annotating and observing the videos for insight.
However, thanks to a lack of suitable tools, the process of marking, highlighting, and linking relationships through a rich dataset of multiple videos can be a tedious process that is burdened with pain points.
For example, ethnographer Colleen Emmenneger investigates human interactions with autonomous vehicles. In a single study she may videotape a single scene from three angles: facing the driver, the road, and birds-eye view of pedestrian-driver interactions.
Before launching into the solution space, I examined the multiple tools ethnographers had available in order to understand the pain points as well as glean inspiration.
Manual Spreadsheet Logging
Here the researcher pauses video, then manually enters time stamp and annotation information into a spreadsheet.
ChronoViz MacOS
The original macOS ChronoViz application, no longer compatible with MacOS updates.
BORIS
BORIS is another video-coding tool often used for annotation
ELAN
In conversation with ethnographers from the Design Lab on these tools, a few trending patterns emerged: