Yoostar

While at Moto development Group, I worked on the early development of the YooStar gaming system, conducting field research, preparing client presentations, creating user flow diagrams, and consulting with industrial designers on the form and user experience. It was our role to take the product vision and define the feature set, user experience, and technology based on our field research and internal R&D.

YooStar is a computer-based gaming and entertainment product that allows users to inhabit classic movie scenes and act out the roles of their favorite characters in real time alongside the other characters – a sort of “movie karaoke”. Each user performance is recorded (both audio and video) and takes the place of the original performance of the starring actor/actress in the scene. For example, YooStar allows the user to be Mike Myers/Austin Powers in Austin Powers, Audrey Hepburn/Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or Alec Guiness/Obi Wan Kanobi in Star Wars. Each of the mash-up video clips can be watched, practiced, and rerecorded repeatedly within the application. The recorded clips can also be shared with the YooStar online community, friends, and family via the desktop application, YooStar’s own online community, as well as current video sharing and social networking sites – including Facebook, Vimeo, and MySpace. In addition to playing, sharing, and rating YooStar-created clips on YooStar.com, users are able to download new clips – both original and mash-ups – comment on others’ performances, and buy new movie clips. The YooStar experience is made possible with custom hardware which includes a small camera/webcam, echo-cancelling microphone, studio green screen and remote control. This hardware is designed to ensure the quality of video, audio, and still-image capture in a variety of at-home settings, at resolutions suitable for viewing on a computer, home entertainment system, or online. The components are also portable and adjustable, and afford a high-quality and consistent user entertainment experience across a range of physical and social settings.

For our field research we identified three user types as the strongest potential user groups in the YooStar market as the initial focus for the product launch: 12-17 year olds living at home with parents, college dorm dwellers, and post-college 20-30 year olds living alone or with roommates. We recruited interview subjects from each of these demographics using Craigslist and traditional paper media such as fliers and posters. Our interview screening looked for subjects with frequent game playing habits and practices, with a preference for those that play Guitar Hero and RockBand, sing Karaoke, and play other artistic or performance based games. We conducted a one hour scripted interview with each of the 7 subjects (at least 2 from each user group) in their homes. We then created persona boards for each subject, extrapolated personal data out in an affinity diagram to explore commonalities and divergence across subjects and user groups, and unearthed useable data points, categories, and themes to inform the YooStar product development.