Work on our new online video platform, called the Workshop, started about a year and a half ago. We began with conversations and experiments on various user interface and workflow options. The origins of the Worskhop, however, stretch back many years beyond that. Here is the back story of why and how the Workshop was created.

Since its inception, Frameweld has created and delivered online video and rich media content for clients. To speed the work and create workflows for our staff, we created our first video content management system in 2002. It featured a synchronization platform, and a host of tools for working with slides and transcripts, handling three different video formats.

The original “Framewelder” has long since been retired, and replaced by our newer creations – larger more flexible video CMSes, better tools for improved efficiency, application development frameworks, search libraries, captioning software, video players created in haXe and Flash, learning management systems, and so on – all of these created and updated over the years related to our video and rich media work.

As you might expect, all these systems and improvements didn’t fit neatly into one master CMS or application. Over the years, we ended up with several systems that worked together, encompassing the numerous features and customizations Frameweld implemented for clients. Many of these systems had distinct styling, which turned into the internal nicknames for these applications – red admin, blue admin, grey admin, and so on.

All this was fine when the work was done internally at Frameweld. Sure, completing a project might entail logging into, not one system, but two or three. Things like that were annoying, and it took extra clicks to get things done, but inside Frameweld we knew where everything was and how it worked together. However, this was definitely NOT the case for outsiders.

For the handful of clients who required and we gave access, the amount of training, handholding and support was a burden on both us and them. Navigating the maze was the opposite of a positive user experience, even if the end product was our trademark easy to use and friendly video presentations vis-à-vis their audiences. I’m glad to report that no one’s head exploded and everyone survived.

The spark that ignited the Workshop was the desire to eliminate that frustration. The goal was to make the process of creating video presentations similar to the final output – friendly, easy, accessible, and a pleasure to use.

I told you that the road to the Workshop was a long one :) I’ll wrap it up and post Part 2 of this story shortly.

Update (02-27-2012) – Part Two is now up.