A Music Oriented Short Video Sharing App Dongci is a Chinese - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

A Music Oriented 
 Short Video Sharing App

Dongci is a Chinese music-oriented short video-sharing app launched in Jan 2018. It currently has 2,000,000 registered users and 200,000 daily active users. Short video apps are popular in China (e.g. TickTok) and become a competitive market. Dongci distinguishes itself by focusing on the musical communities and providing multi-frames video experience.

Current 
 Situation Research Insights Design Solutions

PRO
 MUSICIANS GENERAL 
 USERS

KEY USERS

Early Seed Users Original Content Creaters
 Created the Overall Musical Atmosphere in Dongci
 Expect the Community 
 to Stay Music Focus Music Lovers
 Music Content Comsumers 
 Dongci Need to Engage Them in Oder to Grow Low Engagement
 High Churn Rate

Current Music Content

Music Videos of
 Independent Musician Band Live Records

Play and Sing Skill Show Off

One Man Band with Multi-frame Group Multi-frame Collaboration

Remixing Videos

Remix video function is derived from the multi-screen video experience. Users can collaborate with the original musician by adding or replacing their

• wn video on one of the frames to

create a new video.

Current 
 Situation Research Insights Design Solutions

PRO
 MUSICIANS

KENNY

Early Seed Users Original Content Creaters
 Created the Overall Musical Atmosphere in Dongci
 Expect the Community 
 to Stay Music Focus

• Need a place to show off

their skills and gain more exposure

• Meet other great musicians
• Mainly communicate offline
• r through messenger apps,

there is no remote collaboration platform for musicians in China

GENERAL 
 USERS

SARAH

Music Lovers
 Music Content Comsumers 
 Dongci Need to Engage Them in Oder to Grow Low Engagement
 High Churn Rate

• they only share their music

in private groups

• they have limited ability in

music, uncomfortable to 
 create content alone

• they get bored easily 


if they play music alone

S W O T

• It’s hard for general users to

participate in the music community

• Recommendations are not accurate
• Limited revenue generators
• Music focused atmosphere
• Seed users Musicians create high

quality content

• multi-screen technology enable users

to make creative videos

• Remix video function enable users

to engage each other

• More apps are adopting the multi-

screen technology

• Compete with high traffic apps for

user’s time

• Short video apps are popular
• Star-making variety shows are hot and

bringing traffics to the music industry

• Current music products in the

market focus on “listening” and content consumption

DESIGN GOAL

Get More Users to Participate 
 while Maintaining 
 a Music-Focused Community

Current 
 Situation Research Insights Design Solutions

Build a Strong Connection 
 between 
 the Scenario and our Product

Dongci Video

play music together

*current slogan of Dongci

play music together

Whenever the user wants 
 to play music together 
 with someone else they use Dongci Video.

Create an atmosphere 
 for our target users to want to
 play music together

How might we enable 


• ur target users to 


collaborate better and play music together?

How do we define better?

MORE
 easy • convenient • flexible

Where did we start?

Multi-Frame Video Multi-Frame Videos 
 with Multiple Players Remixed 
 Multi-Frame Videos 
 with Multiple Players

*statistics is calculated by going through 600 videos Dongci Video recommended

32% 12.8% 2.83%

more work
 ≠
 more collaboration

Followers：Music Piece：Collaborations

more fans
 ≠
 more collaboration

8.2K：271 : 0 190K : 50 : 3

414 : 51 : 80

8.2K：271 : 0 190K : 50 : 3

414 : 51 : 80

Collaboration Rate:

0% 6%

156.86%

(#collaboration / # music piece)

compare to overall 2.83%

leave an empty frame
 welcome others to join and remix Video is broken down to 


• ne instrument each frame

set song name as a tag Well known and popular song

leave an empty frame
 welcome others to join and remix Video is broken down to 


• ne instrument each frame

set song name as a tag Well known and popular song

• Creator intentionally invits
• thers to join them
• Participants know they are

welcomed to join

• flexible for participants with

different skills to join

• easy for regular users to join the

remix

• findable and searchable

• Enable creators to invite
• Let participants know they are

welcomed to join

• Make videos flexible for

participants to join

• Make videos easy to be found

and searched for

• Reduce user’s learning cost

How did we put them to use?

Start a Collaboration Join a 
 Collaboration Creative
 Collaboration

Enable users to 
 start a collaboration 
 and invite friends to join

start a collaboration 1.0

PRO:

• easy to implement
• works into the current flow

CON:

• hidden feature, easily missed
• require user to publish unfinished work
• not flexible for multiple-user collaboration

start a collaboration 2.0

Studio

PRO:

• support multiple-user collaboration
• encourage real collaboration during

the process

• enable general users to get help and

feedbacks to polish their work for publishing

• addressed the privacy concerns

CON:

• new module that’s harder to implement
• will need more effort to educate users

Studio

• Sarah gets bored easily when she plays alone.
• Kenny wants to play with other musicians.
• There is no online collaboration tool for

musicians in China.

• Sarah is uncomfortable share unfinished work

in public environment.

• Sarah has limited ability in music to create
• riginal content on her own.

Studio key features

Building a Team

Problem: 
 Currently, users can only interact with each

• ther after content is fully produced. Even

though they can use the remix function to collaborate, it lacks the real sense of collaboration when they are making the music. 
 Approach: 
 The Team concept is introduced as one of the key element for Studio. Building a team in studio enable users to engage each other at early stage of content creation and get advised by trusted friends and musicians.

Sharing Work in Process

Problem: 
 The Draft feature in Dongci is temporary with limited features. There is no ways for users to share their work in process with friends to get feedback before posting to the public. 
 Approach: 
 The Track feature in Studio serves as a temporary gallery for group members to view and give feedback to each other without posting it in public.

Real Interactions

Problem: 
 The current users could only interact with each

• ther under the comment sections when the

music piece is posted or remix existing music

• work. Musicians mentioned that they have to

talk and share files with collaborators in other messenger apps such as WeChat. They need a centralized place to communicate. 
 Approach: 
 We aim to create a private space for users to

• collaborate. The Update section combines the

feature of a chatroom and new update of the group so users can communicate.

Easy Setup

Users may easily set up and invite friends to collaborate

• n their exciting new project.

Starting with 
 a Conversation

Communication is the key to any

• collaborations. Studio allow users

talk and plan the project with their group members, right at where they record.

Work in Process Sharing

Record and share work in process in Studio, viewable only to group

• members. Enable users to get

feedback and help from trust friends before sharing their work to the public.

Compose with Confidence

Enjoy playing music with friends and get ready for the master piece. Compose the final piece with best version

• f their work.

Future Development

Product

• Provide realtime interaction through

audio and video chat

• Provide recording feature during the

video chat

• Develop other collaboration tools for

future revenue generation Use Case

• Enable users to build team and

groups with other musicians, so they can communicate as a group and produce better content

• Enable professional musicians to

mentor grow users through private sessions to help general users to grow

Start a Collaboration Join a 
 Collaboration Creative
 Collaboration

Current Entry Point

• Remix Button when playing the

video in full screen

• Collaborate Button when the

video is paused in full screen

• Remix Button under Discovery

hot posts

• Users could only make a remix if

they come across the music they like while swiping through the videos

However… the users said…

Who do you want to collaborate with?

Videos are only searchable by musicians and topics, not by the name of the music.

• Friends • Famous Musicians • Musicians I follow • Musicians share similar music taste

What kind of content do you like to work on?

• Music I know how to play • Music I love

These videos are hidden under updates with messages and comments.

39.8%

*statistics is calculated by going through 600 videos Dongci Video recommended

edited videos with subtitles

multi-frame manual subtitles

Enable users to easily
 join a collaboration

“Remix” Component

• Restructure the information

architecture and add “Remix” to the top level navigation

• Consolidate the Remix welcomed

videos so users could easily access

• Categorize the videos by “Friends”,

“Musicians”, and “Events”

❖Require content creators to mark their

videos as “view only” or “invite collaboration”

Searchable Music

• Make music searchable by name so

users could easily search for music they are familiar with

• Display popular music as suggestions

❖Require content creators to note the

name of the music.

Search by Music Cancel User Topic Music We Don’t Talk Anymore Love Yourself Counting Star Whistle Love Me Like You Do Apologize Heartbeats If I were a Boy Let Her Go Love the Way you Lie Perfect Stranger 3123 Joined 423 Joined 262 Joined 254 Joined 2123 Joined 2145 Joined 2123 Joined 521 Joined 293 Joined 2553 Joined 263 Joined

Displaying Subtitles

• Most popular way to participate is

through singing

• Help users to get familiar with the song
• Allow creators to better showoff their
• riginal music

❖Require content creators to edit in the

lyric as subtitles

Sunny Days

New Remix

Sunny Days

Add Lyrics

Attract users to
 join a collaboration

Star Events

• Both musicians and general users

expressed interests in playing music with popular musicians

• Collaborate with popular musicians to

create events to attract more users

• Link all remixed videos together under

a thread and rank them by popularity

Future Development

• Invite popular musicians to attract users to join at early stage
• Give out limited permissions to independent musicians in Dongci to create events to

help them gain more exposure when the Event feature gains momentum

• Allow all users to apply for permission to create events down the road

Start a Collaboration Join a 
 Collaboration Creative
 Collaboration

Collecting to Clipboard

• Allow users to collect video clips

by frame for future content creation, to address the need for users to flexibly participate in the collaboration

❖Require video formatted to

individually controllable frames

Composing with Multiple Clips

• Enable users to create new content

by composing clips from multiple users from different music piece

Future Development

• Enable musicians to charge for their high quality music piece if users want to create new

music piece with their content

Thanks.