Gravitywell hacks Interval Films

4 minute read

It’s only been a few short weeks since our Hackathon in Cornwall but we’re gearing up for a new hack, this time for a Bristol client.


Interval Films is a pioneer in the Time Lapse film making industry. They set up proprietary camera units to capture beautiful images of building construction, engineering projects and spectacular art exhibits. Founder Ollie Larkin approached Gravitywell with a brief to create a best-in-class software platform for clients to view feeds from the hi-res cameras. Of course, the prospect of building a new system and interfacing with cameras was too much for us to resist.

With so many unknowns and lots of possible approaches, the project was perfect for our ‘hack’ approach to design and development. The idea was to put the entire team on the project over a short space of time, to rapidly build a solution with heavy client involvement. Fortunately our schedules aligned and we could make a start this week, but we had to work very fast as we have less than 3 weeks to complete.

 

The Plan

This week - research, UX, UI and aesthetics

Next week - development, daily demos of progress

Final week - testing, content & launch

 

Session 1 - User stories

A group session to gather requirements

 

Session 2 - Wireframing

Review of the current system and discussion of functionality that would meet the requirements of the user stories. First wireframes and clickable prototypes started to emerge.

 

Session 3 - Brand, styling and UI

Understanding the brand. Review of directions for styling.

Some of the decisions and details that we noted:

  • We’ll approach the design ‘Mobile First’. We know from analytics that 50% of Interval Films users are now on mobile devices. In addition, this should force us to keep the interface simple and usable throughout.
  • Although we love the look of overlay controls on the camera images - we have to be careful because a lot of cameras have ‘action’ at the bottom of the image.
  • A key challenge is a crucial UI element that allows the user to navigate quickly and easily through a range of images (e.g. 10 min  intervals of 1 day). How many thumbnails do they need to see, what resolution we can show them and how quickly will they load?
  • Consideration of where and how we store images for the new platform is obviously very important. We need a balance of cost, performance, reliability, security and future-proofing.

 

On Monday we start development and the whole of Gravitywell will be focussed on the project deliverables. It will be intense and challenging but we’ll try to post updates on progress throughout.

If you would like to speak to us about your project and how Gravitywell could deliver a working version in just 5 days, get in touch.

Written by Hugo Walker (Head of Marketing & Digital Content). Read more in Latest by Hugo or check our their socials , Instagram