TikTok x USC Spring Class

Project Owner and lead, UX researcher

Overview

TikTok launched Effect House Beta, its public game engine for creating effects. To better understand first time users painpoints and spearhead our education collaborations, I proposed and led a partnership between TikTok and USC, resulting in a 6-month user study through a workshop and Spring course.

What I did

  • Established the first University partnership with TikTok that educated students on AR
  • Led user research, workshops, and tutorials to provide students with learning resources
  • Gathered user feedback from students, identified painpoints, and worked with product team to improve Effect House
  • Collaborated with engineering on optimization standards and performance fixes

Impact

  • Critical insights into first-time Effect House user challenges

  • Gain feedback that directly impacted key Effect House features being implimented, including the visual scripting and tutorial libraries.

User Research on Effect House Usability

Goal: Receive direct feedback from USC students learning Effect House for the first time and help TikTok improve the Effect House engine for our users.

Introduction Workshop: Understanding our Userbase

To officially introduce Effect House and increase excitement for the upcoming Spring course, I partnered with product to run a workshop that included 2 interactive demos and discussions around AR. After the Spring class roster filled with 16 students, we sent out a pre-class survey to understand students' background.

Results:

  • Introduced Effect House for the first time to public audience
  • 80 students attended the workshop-- 3X our expected amount.
  • Of the students signed up for the class, most had designer backgrounds. 10% had previous scripting experience

    • Spring Class

    Upon launching the class, students were really excited to use Effect House. To inspire students in their Effect Creation journey, I invited a well-known TikTok Effect Creator Laura Goullion to give a lecture. Each student created a project for their midterm. We noticed many students used the same randomizer template and no students had published onto TikTok .

    Gathering Feedback from Professors and TA

    We interviewed the professors and teaching assistants to better better understand student's painpoints for using Effect House and their preference towards the single template.


  • Visual Scripting too difficult : Students needed help with visual scripting and struggled with complex interactions.
  • More templates and tutorials needed: High learning curve led to increased need for more diversified templates.
  • Concerns about social media : Students were uneasy about privacy when publishing on social media.

    • Adjustments after Feedback

    Based on the interview feedback and time constraints, we shared the following resources for short term support, while planning for longer term solutions:


  • Effect House YouTube Tutorials: These existing tutorials taught both visual scripting and engine integration
  • Additional Template Resources: These templates focused on the most common requests students had for interactions.
  • Effect-Of-the-Week Showcase: This event showcased 3rd party effects and celebrated diversity on our app. We hoped it would create a more encouraging environment.

    • To connect more with students and hear their feedback, I brought 2 designers and 1 engineer to USC for the final class critique. We experienced student projects and discussed their usages and requests for Effect House.

    TikTok employees attending class critique and giving feedback

    Effect House Youtube tutorials focusing on visual scripting and engine features

    Results and Impact

    Our goal for this class was to gather valuable feedback from students using Effect House for the first time and use this to improve our tool.

    Class feedback directly contributed to the creation of tutorials and template library on Effect House website

    Results

  • Gained over 30 pieces feedback from students; 40% were planned to be implemented into Effect House engine.
  • Requests for more templates: 90% of students started projects from a template.
  • Requests for more Video tutorials: Students more easily followed video tutorials to get started.

    • Impact

  • More Inclusive templates: This feedback led to the creation of increased templates, which are some of the most used resources for TikTok effect creation

  • More Emphasis on Video Tutorials Based on this additional feedback, TikTok rolled out a suite of video tutorials on the official Effect House website.

    • Wetware

    TikTok
    Livestreaming AR
    TikTok
    Animal Audition Effect

    Momento