As a student of Interaction Design at Umeå University I had frequently heard of Codemill and the cool stuff they worked with. When it was time for me to choose what company to write my master thesis with, Codemill was high on the list, the great reception and exciting areas to work with, sealed the deal. I was interested in working both with UX and Front End Development, it took a while for me to specify what I wanted to do for my Master Thesis but eventually I landed on doing a UI focused project.
The objective of my study was to find out how the search function on video assets on the start page of Accurate Video could be improved. I chose this project as I found it very exciting and saw a lot of potential with how the search could be approved, as it was quite simple and there was much functionality that could be implemented to make searching easier and more efficient for the user.
During the semester I worked iteratively, testing different prototypes of varying fidelity, while getting feedback from experts at Codemill and doing user tests to see what parts of my designs worked well and what did not. Eventually I landed on a faceted search system constructed of checkboxes that made it easy for the user to create quite refined searches while still having a good overview of the search query. The design also featured the option to search for the videos content, save searches, and an alternative way to create searches in the form of “tags” that could be directly entered into the search field.
During my time at Codemill, I’ve learned a lot, not only about UX design and post production video industry, (something I hadn’t previously grasped the scale and importance of) but also the importance of communicating and getting information from many sources to get a more realistic and accurate view of things, something that has applied to many parts of my Master Thesis work.
In the beginning of my work at Codemill I was excited but also quite intimidated by the competence of the people working at the company and complexity of the work they do. However that quickly changed as I got to know the company and saw how very welcoming and positive they were. I think this kind of attitude really makes it less daunting to fail and makes people more keen to collaborate and get help from one another, resulting in a much better end product. I will really miss Codemill and can strongly recommend you working/writing your Master Thesis here.