Working Dog Studios produce popular tv shows that are filmed in front of a live audience. They have a specific process around vetting people before inviting them to the show.
Initially, they were managing the entire process of collecting interest from viewers, vetting them for the audience, scheduling their visits to the studio and sending invites via a manual process spanning Google Forms, multiple spread-sheets and email.
We designed a web app with a form integrated into their current website to simplify this process for them.
Here are 3 smart ideas we designed and implemented for them to significantly simplify their operations.
Earlier, interest from guests was collected via a Google Form and stored in a Google Sheet. Someone would copy the data into an excel sheet, format them into groups and then paste into another excel sheet which served as the master data source. This tedious step needed to be performed several times as they received new submissions all the time.
We designed a form that integrates into their current website for collecting data and automated the process of grouping the guests and presenting them as a chronological queue to process.
We called this “Next in line” and it always shows the next group that should be processed along with relevant information needed to process them.
One of the important goals of the design was to let the production team quickly contact each group, talk to them and make a decision about inviting them.
This group processing interface was designed with 3 important functions; display audience group and their information, show additional context from previous interactions (if any) and also record notes of each interaction.
We designed a single place where all important group information like names, contacts, gender, post code can be displayed, previous actions and notes can be viewed and more context can be recorded.
Once a group has been vetted, they can be added to the guest list of any particular episode with a simple drop down interaction.
A lot of visual indicators were added to lower cognitive load and help the production team scan information and make decisions faster.
Age distribution targets: It is important to have an audience that spans across ages so that they respond to a wide variety of topics discussed. A colored status indicator shows the team when they’ve reached or exceeded a target.
Group Status has been indicated with colour to show “Confirmed”, ”Stand by” and “No show”. This also helps the team keep records of who showed up, post filming.