Big Sofa
Leading the design & development of Big Sofa - a qualitative video research platform
The Big Sofa Platform concept
The Big Sofa product came from a desire to bring customers to life for market researchers, using broadcast quality, filmed conversations. Big Sofa’s content offered an authentic and naturalistic window into the lives of ordinary consumers.
The product needed to allow users to manage hours of high quality conversational films by searching through transcripts – getting insight from the content quickly and effectively. The aim was to create a desktop app that could work like the Spotify desktop app putting the transcripts and video together. It was meant to be a widget that could work alongside all of the other tools on a users desktop.
We created The Big Sofa prorotype in 2008, when this kind of product and video management was completely cutting edge. It was a tool that just didn't exist anywhere else. The app was built using Adobe Air and could be opened from your desktop applications folder on a PC and a Mac.
Developing the concept into a product
Once we had the prototype we conducted user research with 20 potential users from the research sector across the world.
We met them in person and on Skype to analyse how they might use a tool like this.
Competitor analysis
Big Sofa was influenced heavily by desktop apps such as Spotify and iTunes. We were also inspired by the Reuters TV app that included transcripts alongside the video.
Innovation award
For this product I was awarded a ‘Bravery In Research’ Innovation award. The software was seen as groundbreaking at the time of creation and also something that pushed boundaries within the industry it was created for.
Big Sofa Tech
Since 2008 when we created the first pioneering version of The Big Sofa application, the company became Big Sofa Tech, helping the world’s biggest brands use video to analyze human behavior.
