Video Content Production, Products and Design Thinking

Category: Uncategorized

  • UX: Not Just Pretty Pixels – Driving Real Business Outcomes

    UX: Not Just Pretty Pixels – Driving Real Business Outcomes

    In today’s media technology landscape, businesses are constantly seeking ways to gain an edge. While factors like innovative technology and strong marketing are crucial, one element often underestimated, yet incredibly powerful, is User Experience (UX). UX is not just about creating visually appealing interfaces; it’s about understanding your users, their needs, and designing products and services that are effective, efficient, and enjoyable to use. When done right, UX plays a pivotal role in achieving significant business outcomes.

    Understanding Your Users: The Foundation of Success

    At its core, effective UX starts with a deep understanding of our users. This goes beyond basic data and delves into their workflows, goals, pain points, and context of use in their environments. To gather this, we use methods like contextual inquiry and field studies are invaluable for uncovering hidden insights into how users actually work in their production environments…. By observing and understanding users in their own context, we can identify unmet needs and design solutions that truly resonate with them. This focus on understanding the “use” rather than just the “user” is particularly critical for our complex environments of live media where usefulness is paramount…. Ignoring this foundational step can lead to interfaces that, as Jakob Nielsen wisely states, “A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail” ….

    Boosting Efficiency and Productivity: Time is Money

    A well-designed user experience directly impacts user efficiency and productivity. When applications are intuitive and workflows are streamlined, users can accomplish their tasks more quickly and with fewer errors. This is crucial for all users, from novices getting started to experts who use the system daily. While users often prefer to “start using the system immediately” rather than spending time on tutorials, a poorly designed interface can lead to frustration, wasted time, and decreased productivity.

    Investing time in UX efforts means designing for efficiency. This includes providing flexible and fluid pathways through workflows, offering accelerators for expert users to speed up common tasks, and enabling users to resume tasks that have been interrupted through access to historical content and clear pathways back to their work. By optimizing the user experience, our media solutions can unlock significant gains in productivity, allowing media professionals to focus on higher-value activities.

    Enhancing User Satisfaction and Loyalty: Happy Users Stick Around

    A positive user experience fosters user satisfaction and loyalty. When users find our products and services easy, effective, and even enjoyable to use and interact with, they are more likely to continue using it and recommend it to others. This is especially important in our competitive markets where users have numerous alternatives. A well-crafted UX demonstrates that we understand the business values our users have and that apply to their time, leading to their increased trust and a stronger relationship.

    Reducing Costs: Prevention is Better Than Cure

    Investing in UX early in the development process can lead to significant cost savings in the long run, it rarely works to include UX topics after the coding and delivery is being finished. By identifying and addressing usability issues early on through user research and concept testing, we can avoid costly redesigns and rework later. A user-centered design approach also helps to minimize user errors. Without this approach, errors can lead to increased support costs and decreased customer satisfaction. Even more, an intuitive interface reduces the need for extensive training and support documentation, freeing up resources and improving the overall user experience.

    UX: A Strategic Imperative for Business Success

    In conclusion, UX is far more than just aesthetics; it’s a strategic imperative that directly impacts key business outcomes. By prioritizing understanding user needs, designing for efficiency, enhancing user satisfaction, and reducing costs, businesses can leverage the power of UX to achieve tangible results. As we strive for success in today’s dynamic environment, we are reminded that a focus on the user experience is a direct investment in the future of our businesses. It’s time to move beyond thinking of UX as a mere feature and recognize its crucial role in driving real and measurable business success.

  • 2024 Year in Review: Lessons and Milestones

    2024: A LOOK BACK AT THE YEAR

    It is not my style to hold on to the ways “we have always done it.” I don’t dwell on the way things are. However, reflecting on the past is always an important activity. It is crucial to learn from all the actions, experiments, learning, and successes.

    January

    Every year begins with Family. We gather together for the New Year, raise a glass and celebrate together. Soon after, we often celebrate my Birthday as a Capricorn. It is a blessing for myself. It is a wonderful way to start every year.

    And after the new year began in full swing, some trips to Europe started off the annual work season. With one of the great new initiatives of getting out to extend the EVS Community through outreach. The first stop of 2024 was in northern Belgium. It was at one of the many schools around the world that EVS is engaged with, Thomas More.

    EVS Community initiative… School outreach

    In 2024, we focused on supporting our EVS community. We started more outreach and discussions. These discussions cover how schools can work with EVS to extend their student activities. The outreach started with stops in Mechelen – Belgium. It continued in New Jersey – USA and Oklahoma – USA. We were off to a great first start.

    February

    February is often filled with actions around a Super Bowl site. This year, Las Vegas served as the location. The visit had a great stop to spend time with our EVS Leadership team at the Super Bowl Compound. It also included a retirement celebration with a long-time EVS operator, Charles Burke. Additionally, there was an evening celebrating EVS 30 years. More than 75 EVS users attended before the Super Bowl productions took place. The Super Bowl game is only one of many activities in the city. I was fortunate to spend some long-needed catch up with my friend Dave Taylor. He enables the WWE events to succeed with EVS at the core.

    March

    This month continued with visits to sites. We went back to Vegas for the Nascar event. We also had some great discussions with our EVS users at the site. Many of which are taking full advantage of LSM-VIA, and XtraMotion. While in Vegas, we visited the SVG Venue Summit. We also kicked off the event as the title sponsor for the Stadium Venue market’s annual get together.

    April

    The challenging time of the year… NAB trade show in Las Vegas is always in full swing. In 2024, there was a great meet-up with LSM Replay operators in Las Vegas. There were also multiple Cerebrum Engineers for user meet-ups.

    The latter part of April included a visit to one of our university partners, Montclair State University. They managed a live production for students using EVS. One of our Belgian schools (Thomas More) visited the US West Coast. They stopped by multiple production sites. Their tour included a visit to FOX Sports PICO Lot.

    The personal highlight was an organized surprise for my wife Jeanine’s 50th birthday. We gathered about 45 of her close friends. They surprised her with a dinner and celebration.

    May

    The month of May was a bittersweet milestone. We witnessed the conclusion of 4 years of college baseball for our son Gavin Stellpflug. He made his final debut from the bullpen at Rutgers University.

    I had many visits throughout the month in the Kentucky USA area. I visited for the PGA Championship. I also visited Louisville University and Univ Kentucky. While making some visits to Detroit to visit the MLB venue and productions for the game.

    June

    June brought visits to Germeny for the EURO 2024. I had a surprise while walking to the game from our parking lot. I accidentally bumped into my lifelong friend Maureen. It’s a small world! This was a team building event, with our CEO and other colleagues to the match day.

    My younger sister Wendy got married in the later part of June in the Dominica Republic. I was blessed to walk her down the aisle. I gave her away to my new brother-in-law Patrick.

    July

    July was the mid-year point, with support at the IDEA conference to engage all our users from the Stadium/Venue market. The event support for our hundreds of EVS users working for the Olympics started with some visits. We went to Lille, France, and Paris for the 30-year celebrations for EVS. The EVS House was our home for hundreds of EVS users making a visit to unwind and celebrate together.

    August

    With extra breakaways from Paris, I visited some other sites managing production for the Olympics. I met up with many other users at different sites far and wide. There are users in Paris, London, and Stamford. Many more are in dozens of other locations around the world that I did not make it to.

    While coming back home, I took some brief time away to travel with my youngest son and family. We made some potential college visits in the USA. We were seeing where he will pursue his further education in the 2025 horizon.

    September

    This month, now back in full swing for the fall, included visits to the US Open tennis site. I also visited the Big Ten Network production Center. There were some visits to various college football games sites as well. This month brought an extra game squeezed in. We watched my son’s girlfriend compete in her final season as a college Soccer Player. She plans to move towards professional Soccer in the years to come.

    I had the brief chance to see lifelong friends at the game. I also had a long needed visit with my Aunt Peggy in the Madison WI area. First, I will resume travel for an NFL visit to Thursday Night Football for Amazon. Then, I will visit Nascar’s facility in Charlotte.

    October

    The fall period includes visits to EVS headquarters for meetings. The weekend is filled with an NFL London visit. This allows for engagement with some EVS Guarantee Engineers from the London market. It also involves traveling replay operators for the game site and NFL leadership in London.

    While the Mr. October visits of MLB Playoffs were in full swing for the FOX crew. They were running on the latest LSM-VIA versions for the baseball season final games.

    November

    November brought team building with colleagues in a simulated production domain. This allowed all our non-technical members to experience live production cadence and demands themselves.

    Throughout the year, it is needed to take a small break. We celebrated my wife (Jeanine Stellpflug) successful stages of completing some medical milestones. It warranted a Celebration of Life together. We had a brief getaway to the Canary Islands.

    This before bouncing back to the US and managing some NFL game site visits in Philadelphia.

    December

    The wrap up to 2024 ended with the annual tradition of the EVS Americas holiday party. Some new colleagues are joining the group for 2024. The annual New York City visit for Piper, with an early AM train ride with dad to the city… and James making a last minute visit to University of Maryland for some continued partnership discussions with a colleague.

    2025 Onward

    As I look into the 2025 cycle, I hope to cross everyone’s path this year. I wish everyone the best in their endeavors much like mine.

  • 20 years of fun at EVS

    Today is a day in which I start a milestone in my career. So I decided to take a short reflection of the times at EVS and put them on paper (or digital bits of sorts).

    It began in 1999, my early days at EVS, supporting customers and training. As a freelancer for EVS, I supported some of the initial growth, and helped get customers up-to-speed on the new form of technology entering the mobile trucks and productions.

    Shortly thereafter, I moved frm the freelance role to full time, and moved my new life and to-be-wife, to New Jersey and joined EVS in late 2000.

    Early days of Xfile

    One of the best joys of my roles at EVS, was to help bring new products, workflows and solutions to market. The world was changing, from tape melts and linear backups of media to videotape… and looking towards a new way of managing high density media movements.

    I was part of the original efforts to launch the XFile into the market. From bringing prototypes of a 2U chassis to dozens of shows, and engaging with users about new ideas in am emerging category at the time, of going every more tapeless.

    Bringing Production Asset Management in Live Sports & Broadcast Centers

    As my friend Chris Strong reminded me last night… we brought new Proof of concepts using an existing product at the time, the Airbox, to serve evolving content needs for linear editing using Disk Recorders as sources. With the ability to harness a cluster of EVS servers doing replays, we could bring access to content to an editor and provide rapid turn around for Golf. In years later, this would transform into the launch of a new product line of known as the IPDirector.

    As time would move one, we would transform the core of how biug events, broadcast centers and the high paced world of live sports was executed… including domains like the Super Bowl, US Open Tennis, X-Games, World Cup, Nascar, and too many to list.

    Built a new HD future for the market.

    I was honored to be a part of the team who launched the HD-XT server into the market, serving the growing demand for 720p and 1080i emerging standards.

    As broadcasters were transforming into new video standards, and service providers were scrambling to figure out how they would server the need, we saw the market shift, and positioned EVS ahead of the demand by supporting all HD formats emerging. This change was one of exciting times, and the ability for me to visit almost every new HD truck and production in the market, and help bring new solutions to the problems our industry faced… was humbling and remarkable.

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    Break down the walls of Native NLE exchange of media

    Native codec and Edit Workflows

    Establishing EVS as one of the market leaders who solves the problems of File sharing to NLE editors in the market, we brought new ways of looking at native formats. Focusing on how to build partnerships with AVID, and support the native DNxHD codec to speed the time to air.

    Launching Spotbox into the market

    Showing HD Spotbox at NAB in 2005

    With my EVS colleagues, and one of many great developers like Marc Beckers (to name one of many) We changed the way a Technical Director performed live graphic elements like transitions and fill/key promos on-air.

    With the speed of EVS, and the ability to listen to the customer needs… we filled a gap and provided a ‘sportbox’ solution, which would overtime become of of the US market and beyond, a new foundation of live execution.

    Helping to lead ideas and agility

    As I could keep recalling all of the historical moments… I will take a break from the topic to summarize one of the aspects in which I enjoyed the most.

    Some of the most fruitful time at EVS came through the discussions, and the ability to present ideas and think of new ways to solve problems. Whether it was in new products, or new processes, or just new ways to look at the market. The collaboration at EVS and the ability to continually look inward and outward at market forces and how to solve problems… it was a real pleasure to be part of these teams.

    As time went on, I was afforded opportunities inside EVS to engage with Global teams around the world. As they gave me the trust and the task to communicate EVS vision, roadmap and to help capture inbound ideas, I was fortunate enough to be part of a larger world than my US beginnings.

  • We’re On-The-Air… We don’t have time to worry about your gear!

    I sit here on a plane on a rainy night in Rio de Janiero, bound to Sao Paulo to find my hotel bed to get some sleep…

    While the day was productive, I was yet again reminded about a topic that is often times lost on many vendors… Uptime.

    Misunderstand the SLA

    The role of SLA and service revenue many times overlooks the elephant in the room. The vendors searching revenue overlook the role of creating solutions that work, and provide the value underscoring a live production facility. A great security blanket provides comfort, a warm and fuzzy feeling that you can rest well and stay safe. Security blankets are NOT designed to continually administer a sedative to the restless member and make IP for a a poor lifestyle that a person leads.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident

    While no vendors strive to make garbage, there are still a wide array of companies doing business under the guise of embellishment. They overpromote a solution, or push a unscrupulous sales team to sell shelf stock of old products to make up for poor product t management. With the ubiquitous nature of access to products from a Google search and the ability to make almost anything seem better than it is … We find more solutions arriving I to the hands of a live production that simply don’t hold the water that poured from the jugs of snake oil labelled barrels. We need to re-establish the bounds of truth in advertising and proving solutions for the market.

    To have and to hold, in good times and in bad, until …

    Markets are shifting, and busineses are faced with pressure today that makes everyone look for the almighty cheaper solution. This pressure adds to the undermining of the long term goals in mind, stability and success. It is unfortunate to think about the number of facilities in which the cheaper solution was elected by the all knowing change agent, or consultant out to make a spiff. We need to consider efficient solutions that reduce the overall costs of on going support, and that provide a marriage of technology and operations to create a happy couple for years to come. We need to look beyond honeymoon phase of a novelty interface and ensure that investment choices provide a sustainable relationship to a household that will grow and evolve by the nature of changing times beyond the foreseeable horizon.

    Let’s drop a waypoint for our journey

    We are creating media production systems to provide a vehicle for our journey. The path will not be the same as we first imagined it, and the turbulence along the way does not have to make the journey poor. But to survive on the road with the right foundations, it will not work to compromise on the used car lot, and then buy more insurance…. We need the part of our journey under our feet that provides the comfort, the stability, and should become the transparent element of our journey that we never want to even think about.

    Let’s get back to the world of great products that WORK, and allow the engineering staff to show the production team that there are no emergencies right now, because they made the right choices before installing.

  • How critical is LIVE to your content

    Some of the most important trends in recent years, is in the area of shelf life of content. While video-on-demand content continues to explore in the industry, and enabling access to anything your heart desires…. there are some things that are still regarded as the highest premium content around. Sports and LIVE event content has a short shelf life, but also can be monetized in totally different means. This content is sought out by consumers in many different ways, as the premium teir of consumption. This difficult fact is in how this content is delivered to the consumer in the time frame expected by their buying habits.

    Reach every Fan

    The World Cup this year saw new heights in content consumption, but the most interesting point was WHAT was also being consumed.

    While there are many comparisons between past events, and the numbers…. what one has to note, is that there was not only a ‘single program stream’ of the matches being made available. The VoD libraries of timely content were massive, multiple video feeds for every match we served up LIVE to fans, and Multicam was the big explosion in content volume…allowing millions of worldwide fans to access their OWN Personal Video Replays.

    http://assets.fiercemarkets.net/public/sites/onlinevideo/verizon_worldcup_devices_500.png

    Personalized Replays

    While in-venue offerings are allowing fans to engage their own personal replays in games.

    “[Fans are] able to choose what replays they want to see and pick their own camera angles” says Kelly Mosier

    http://www.ketv.com/sports/huskers-extended-coverage/new-husker-phone-app-brings-home-experience-to-fans-inside-memorial-stadium/28271798

    User Generated Content

    The other interesting parallels to the way in which a consumer is engaged into this content is in the area of participation. More and more events are embedding technology to allow fans to upload and insert their content into the event…thus extending the participation well outside the boundaries of a typical production. VH-1 was a great example of this, in which User-Generated-Content became the thread of perspective to the style of event.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2014/11/12/vh1s-you-oughta-know-concert-will-incorporate-video-shot-by-fans-at-the-show/

  • Fan Experience starts like this at Barclays Center