Group Members

1. Oliver Song
2. Marco Alagna

Problem statement

Generating viral content for the internet is currently an inefficient process involving either photoshop or web services (www.memegenerator.net). Furthermore, they are restricted to "caption image" type memes. This is not representative of the pool of meme types actually on the internet. Finally, this method of meme generation is not mobile; this is particularly egregious because the large majority of meme source content comes from mobile devices.

We find this to be onix-eptable.

User Analysis

Our users come from a variety of backgrounds. Our most representative user demographic will have:

• spent at least 2 years understanding internet culture
• high school or college level education
• own a smartphone (iPhone primarily)
• either gender
• a sense of humor

Alternatively our target user population can be split into two groups: those who understand internet culture and those who do not.

Those who understand internet culture:

• will have an understanding of which expressions can go with which captions
• will have a quick and accurate judgement of what will and will not be funny to the general internet population
• will be best suited for a traditional meme maker as in "take picture, add caption"

Use case:

We interviewed a person in this space of user population; we'll call this person Subject A. Subject A is a student at Princeton in his second year. He has approximately 8 years of internet browsing experience. He states that he has "high proficiency" in determining web trends and popular memes, as well as a "proficient" meter for judging whether something will or will not be popular. Subject A likes to make images featuring his friends, with funny captions that they would say in certain situations. He expressed his frustration with the current state of content generation technologies. He stated that what he used (memegenerator.net) was slow, buggy, and featured many ads. He described his general usage scenario as:

1. Brainstorming
2. Search for picture of friend
3. Crop background out
4. Going to www.memegenerator.net
5. Click on upload photo
6. Attempt to upload right file size
7. Redo a couple times ("unknown file upload error")
8. Upload correctly, input titles
9. Wait for image to become available
10. Post on friend's wall

In total, this costed Subject A between 30 and 40 minutes. We believe that this can be done more efficiently.

Those who do not:

• will not understand what the general internet population would find funny
• will be best suited for nontraditional viral content generation, such as "video filtering" or "song making", which make use of simpler emotions that do not employ much of the "meta-humor" in many internet memes 

Use case:

We interviewed a person in this space of user population; we'll call this person Subject B. Subject B is a student at Brown University in her first year. She does not spend much time on the computer, and her exposure to viral content is mostly through shared posts on Facebook. She would say that she has 1 year of internet browsing experience, but she doesn't really know. She states that she has "no proficiency" in determining web trends and popular memes, as well as a "semi-proficient" meter for judging whether something will or will not be popular. Additionally, she states that she would not mind trying her hand at viral content generation.

Her ideal usage scenario is:

1. "Take a picture or something"
2. Label it
3. Post it

While Subject B did not really understand much about viral content, her model usage scenario is representative of a large population of users and we believe that our final procedure should be as close to her model as possible.

Task Analysis

1. Obtaining source of humor (photo, video, or sound, or other data)

Reasoning: All great internet memes come from some source of inspiration. However, this inspiration can strike at any time. As a result, it seems that mobile technology is perfectly suited for capturing sources of humor. Mobile devices tend to have access to several ways of capturing this data, including taking pictures and recording video.

Goal: Record or take a photo, video or sound.

Subtasks:

1. User opens the interface
2. User aligns the frame (or onion skin)
3. User records or takes the target source
4. User must send data to some other device or service for processing

Preconditions:

• User must own a video recording device, camera, or microphone

Spatial Constraints:

• Whatever recording instrumentation must be integrated with the latter tasks in one device, which is why we are choosing iOS and iPhone for our device
  Frequency of use:
• There isn't really a way to predict the occurrence of meme-worthy content

2. Processing data

Reasoning: Processing this data (cropping, clipping, etc.) is equally important in the initial construction of viral internet content. It must be done in order to make the important humorous aspects of a photo stand out. In order for users to effectively process their data, they need to know what their goal is in utilizing these images or videos. Traditionally, this task is done using a picture editor on the user's computer. The biggest limiting factor of this is the lack of mobility.

Goal: Reformat data into a more presentable way

Subtasks:

1. Cropping
2. Clipping
3. Changing bitrate
4. Changing resolution
5. Image filters
6. Backgrounds
7. User input (custom crops)

Preconditions:

• User must own software that can do the necessary changes (Photoshop, Audacity, etc)

Time Constraints:

• Processing algorithms can't take unreasonably long

Spatial Constraints:

• Should not take up unreasonable amounts of memory

Frequency of use:

• Constant relative to Task 1

3. Labeling/categorizing humor

*Reasoning: *What makes an meme humorous and reusable is its recurring theme. When creating a completely new meme, the user needs to know what this unifying source of humor is going to be. On the other hand, when creating another instance of an already popular meme, the user must understand what sort of humor the creator was going for. Again, the most traditional way of creating memes or gifs is to use a picture editor, and/or site dedicated to meme generation. Like processing data, it seems like the biggest limiting factor is a lack of mobility.

Goal: Figure out what sort of internet population to appeal to and write text on it

Subtasks:

1. User must choose positions to annotate
2. User must come up with appropriate text
3. User must actually enter text
4. User must save the file

Preconditions:

• Must have a grasp of internet humor

Time Constraints:

• Text editing must not take unreasonably long

Frequency of use:

• Constant relative to Task 1

4. Publishing

*Reasoning: *What separates viral content from a joke between friends is the ability to effectively share your content with the online world. Without any sort or assistance, a user would have to effectively utilize social networking. An effective application would increase efficiency by doing this for the user in any number of specified ways. The downside to automatic content sharing is that it can lead to unwanted situations.

Goal: Publish edited content to different social networks

Subtasks: Divided by social network

1. If user hasn't authorized accounts before, then they must authorize the application first
2. User must select which social networks to communicate with
3. Actually publish

Preconditions:

• User must use social networks in the first place

Time Constraints:

• Publishing must not take unreasonably long

Frequency of use:

• Constant relative to Task 1

5. Viewing ( optional )

Reasoning: Sometimes users will want to see a history of the content they've published, as well as content of other users. They should be able to view a feed of a user's content publications in some centralized location. Therefore we will need to design a web app corresponding to the iPhone app. This, however, is dependent on how much time we have.

Goal: View content from one user in a centralized location

Subtasks:

1. User must sign up for a recording service
2. User must use their username or another's to access the personal feed

Preconditions:

• User must have content to view
• User must have signed up

Time Constraints:

• Web application should not take unreasonably long to load or display

Frequency of use:

• Whenever anyone wants to view anyone else's feed