Video Wireframing
In 2020 when Covid pushed us hard, we (team Xperian) reacted to the situation gracefully and took a few 1BS decisions regarding work.
The decision included location, people, work culture, type of work and workplace productivity. In other words we decided our permanent office space, office timings, ways of working and type of work we will do (and will not) in lieu with our vision of Maker's Ecosystem. This was crucial for us as a team because we don't want to think about it for next 30 years.
As a team we are heavily focused on long-term compounding at the cost of short term gains. The first decision was to build our long term home studio. As a part of the studio, we decided to dedicate a space for recording studio to take care of video and audio components as well.
The decision resulted in a full fledged audio and video recording studio with 💯 acoustic treatment. We designed our environment in such a way that it will enable us to go farther and faster. It took us 7 months to build this. A short tour on this shortly. Getting my gimbal ready for this 😍
Now that the studio is completely setup, I am finding new ways of doing things effectively. My workflows are changing on the go.
One of the biggest workflow change is, I am always ready for a video. My readiness just not include script, lights, background readiness. I am just ready to share my thoughts and ideas. Naturally the space is not as ready as I am at all times. It needs a little work. Adjust the lighting, setup cameras, setup mics and more. By the time all gets ready my thought vanishes. Thanks to our thought decay phenomenon of our human brains.
This was frustrating me as I was missing the most important ideas in the name of getting the space ready. My friends advised me to jot it down and script it. This doesn't work for a person with fibromyalgia. Pain in the hands is the biggest friction. It is hard to type. The thought decay continued while i was busy resisting.
In the past two weeks, I stumbled upon this idea of video wireframing in my head. This is very similar to how I wireframe my screens and digital assets in my 2D world. They are not final but they capture my thoughts and keep my thinking on. I sketch them in my iPad or in my daily continuous journal book. Similarly why not wireframe videos as well 🤔
A quick non-friction way of videoing and keeping the thoughts on. If the idea made sense, further investment can be made in setting up light, audio, cameras and more. This was an epiphany for me and a saviour too. This idea made me film more than 20 videos in just 2 weeks. It was mindblowing to see my Loom library.
My ritual is just to get into the studio (for acoustic reasons) and just hit record. No setup required. The best part is it is stored in cloud and shareable too. This has been the best theraphy for my fibromyalgia as well. I hardly type these days. I just speak into my computer the way I would if i explained it to someone. I call this a video wireframe.
Loom is my wireframing tool. Otter.ai is my go to tool to convert the video to a verbal wireframe. Yeah! Loom can do the transcription but the accurarcy is still not 98% and export options are not so great.
Checkout some of the video wireframes yourself. It took guts to put it out in Youtube as well 🙈 so that I will be a little more responsible around how I articulate ideas.
In reflection, I think Video wireframing is a game changer for people like me.
Some side effects are I have less pain in my hand (from no typing), my articulation is getting better with practice, I am able to show (actual work) and tell, the resistance to film has come down as I called it a wireframe, and most importantly the perfectionist in me is killed by the publishing mindset as these videos are shareable to folks who are more forgiving than the general public.
Video wireframes enable you to send quick messages. It is like sending text messages to friends with typos in it and yet our friends love us for the message and care less about the typos.
I am grateful to the technology available in current times that help me put out my thoughts more effectively. This truly is a game changer for content creators.
Are you trying something on these lines?
🥂 to video wireframing!