Big Sofa
Leading the design & development of Big Sofa - a qualitative video research platform
"Rosie is an extremely hard working individual, who has a passion for what she does, which enables her to overcome obstacles most would just stop at.
Her work on bringing The Big Sofa to market is a great example of this, also highlighting her creativity and innovation in the digital world. Her desire for perfection, drives her to succeed and is always looking for new ideas to improve what she is working on."
Head of Commercial Development Director
Big Sofa
Overview of the product concept
Big Sofa gave market researchers an authentic window into the lives of ordinary consumers through high-quality, naturalistic filmed interviews. The challenge was making hours of that content searchable and usable — letting researchers get to insight quickly without wading through footage.
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The product needed to combine video and transcripts in a single interface, working like a desktop companion alongside a researcher's other tools — think Spotify, but for qualitative research content. We built the prototype in 2008 using Adobe Air, deployable on both PC and Mac. At the time, this kind of video management tool simply didn't exist.
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.
