UX in SG - what's the plan?

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Hi,

this is a bit of a wide ranging question but it’s the main thing that keeps coming up with people (and has been for the 10+ years I have been using SG):

What is th eplan with UX in general?
When the media page was introduced hopes were high that SG was going to get a much needed UX overhaul. Instead it’s been stagnating ever since, with discrepancies between the media page and the regular version/playlist pages causing a lot of frustration.

I had a meeting with an SG team about all things UX about two years ago. Back then I was told they are collecting feedback from clients to make SG more user friendly and streamlined - nothing has actually happened since.

Looking at the CRS and media player, both could do with some love. The fact that notes from teh CRS still don’t tell you the respective version name (and the fact that there is nothing you can do about it) has been bemoaned for a long time. Nothing happens and it feels like people have given up to point out the UX issues across SG.

Let’s not give up and pick uip Don’s old mantra that got us this far:
“it would be awesome if…” :slight_smile:

I’ll start:
It’d be awesome if…

  • SG received a thorough UX pass to eliminate descrepancies on different pages showing the same data.
  • ScreeningRoom and Media Player could be consolidated
  • the CRS had more features and/or could be customised (e.g. to enable clients to bulk download quicktimes, attach files for the entire playlist such as reports, edls etc)
  • generating and exporting reports would finally be a thing in SG (rather than relying on semi-functional pdf exports via the print menu)
  • collaborative reviews with chat and live markers would be a thing (see Wipster, FrameIO, Loupe etc)
  • live markers to accomany the screen grabs wcoudl be implemented (along with “jump to next annotation” etc)
  • notification emails could be properly customised/designed
  • the My Tasks page could be properly designed by the artist
  • the Media page had a better deisng to avoid constantly switching between versions and playlists and switching filters
  • widget fields like progressbars could be introduced to show upload progress, overall show/shot status etc.

Cheers,
frank

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Amen! It just looks old and puts people off. Some modern tech and unification would do it a world of good, alongside workflow modernizations like checklist todos, instant messaging, etc.

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I would add a more common places for a client to log into except 1 playlist.

Some clients are terrible at organising and constantly loose track of playlists sent to them.
Instead if we could share a sort of Asset/Shot overview with them and in the same fashion as how “vendor Users” work, we could “Assign/Share” a version to a client user so they can see it.

And please… some sort of WYSIWYG editor for the Project page so we welcome new artists with some more flair and info than very tiny text fields in the sidebar.

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I had hoped to get some input from the ShotGrid team here :frowning:
They are still active in here, right?! Or is it just users now?

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Additionally, would be great to

  • add a high-resolution images review possibility. For prints or huge storyboards having 2500 pix maximum just does not work.
  • better UI and functionality for PMs (producers) like creating client timelines with stages and milestones, output detailed estimation spreadsheets with nice styling and not plane csv.
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For your first point you could technically override the SG Transcode and upload a higher res MP4 or JPG to the mp4 field. This would not trigger a SG transcode :slight_smile:

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Thanks, Ricardo, I assumed the resolution is limited anyway, but now you say it’s not I’ll try to implement custom decoding.

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Bumping this thread for visibility…

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Thanks @Patrick I would love to see a solid round of UX focused improvements.
Every CRS I send out required the edit assist to download each and every one of the quicktimes in the shares playlist (whichshould really, really be a feature in the CRS by now). So I have to collect them all and upload for him. So it’s either him or me wasting time - every single review…
Just a case in point…

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