Last
week we released four concept videos called Aurora. These concept
videos show a possible future vision of the Web. As the video
producer and project manager for Aurora, I’m excited that hundreds
of thousands of viewers have taken the time to explore our ideas
about where the Web user experience is headed. We’re also excited
to hear about your vision and invite you to get involved as part of
the Mozilla Labs
Concept Series. At our UX
Week conference, I’ll be on a panel about Aurora with
Chris Beard of Mozilla
Labs in addition to co-leading our Design is Made of
People workshop with Sarah
Nelson.In the meantime, I’d like to take you behind the scenes of Aurora, where we learned a ton about what it takes to make a design concept video.
Julia Houck-Whitaker
Behind The Scenes of Aurora
One of the most exciting parts of our R&D projects is sharing
the process and methods that we used with the community. During the
Aurora project, we captured and documented our workshops,
brainstorms, photo shoots and animation work.
Future Scenario Planning
When we started this project, we knew we had to create a vision of what the future might be like so we could imagine the needs that the browser of the future might serve. To do this, Jamais Cascio led a two day workshop where we extrapolated trends and captured ideas. These images show Adaptive Path and the industry experts we invited, participating in the forecasting and scenario creation during the workshop. You can learn more about the project team here.
Brainstorming
We always have to refine our ideas. After the scenario planning workshop, and concept creating we got specific about what users, which tasks and what themes we wanted to address in our video. We looked at other technology concept videos, and discussed what worked well and what didn’t work well. These conversations guided the script writing and animations.
Shoot
After spending several weeks brainstorming concepts, we transformed into a film crew of four. We scouted locations, played casting director, crafted props and directed shots. With a limited budget, we had to make use of the resources that were on site at the shoots and tapped our in-house experts to share their knowledge from past lives as video producers and artists. We shot the farm scenario and the home scenario at the same house, which meant we needed the home office to look like a room in a farm house and the living room to look like a suburban home. The mobile scenarios were shot at the Ferry Building and Ambassador Toys. Thank you to Linda at Ambassador for letting us transform your store into a set.
Animations
Future Scenario Planning
When we started this project, we knew we had to create a vision of what the future might be like so we could imagine the needs that the browser of the future might serve. To do this, Jamais Cascio led a two day workshop where we extrapolated trends and captured ideas. These images show Adaptive Path and the industry experts we invited, participating in the forecasting and scenario creation during the workshop. You can learn more about the project team here.
We always have to refine our ideas. After the scenario planning workshop, and concept creating we got specific about what users, which tasks and what themes we wanted to address in our video. We looked at other technology concept videos, and discussed what worked well and what didn’t work well. These conversations guided the script writing and animations.
After spending several weeks brainstorming concepts, we transformed into a film crew of four. We scouted locations, played casting director, crafted props and directed shots. With a limited budget, we had to make use of the resources that were on site at the shoots and tapped our in-house experts to share their knowledge from past lives as video producers and artists. We shot the farm scenario and the home scenario at the same house, which meant we needed the home office to look like a room in a farm house and the living room to look like a suburban home. The mobile scenarios were shot at the Ferry Building and Ambassador Toys. Thank you to Linda at Ambassador for letting us transform your store into a set.
To bring the storyboards to life in a way that reflected the UI concepts and script, Jesse James Garrett narrated and acted out the animated sequences at a whiteboard. These allowed us to communicate the specific movements of the animations to our animators at Whiskytree before they started their animation process. Here’s a video that shows the concepts animated and narrated.
Thanks for reading, and you can stop by the Aurora site for even more information about the project.
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What other people have to say about Aurora
As you can probably tell by now, we’re excited about the release of
Aurora. Read some of the coverage:
Leah Talks With Audrey Chen
About Bringing IA to Comedy Central
About Bringing IA to Comedy Central
Leah Buley recently sat down to talk with Audrey Chen, the Senior
IA at Comedy Central. Audrey has led the IA for sites such as
TheDailyShow.com and ComedyCentral.com. Read
the interview here.
Get the FeedSelections From Our Blog
- Kumi Akiyoshi
Aurora: Visual Design - Jesse James Garrett
Aurora: Forcasting the Future - Dan Harrelson
Aurora: Mozilla Labs’ Open Call - Alexa Andrzejewski
A Mile in Their Shoes
What We’re Reading
- Gizmodo
90 Visions of the Future in MS Paint are Terrifying, Insane - Amazon
ABC3D: an amazing pop up alphabet book - NYTimes.com
A Map of Olympic Medals - David R. Martin
Animated Sorting Alogrithm Demo - Befunky
Customize your avatar - Network World
Nokia to Open Research Unit in Africa
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