Spectra
Spectra aims to revolutionize storytelling by allowing users to create their own movies and TV series. By offering full creative control over the style, characters, and locations, Spectra enables users to bring their unique visions to life. This project explores how AI can democratize filmmaking, providing accessible tools for creators.
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The Challenges
Users struggle to bring their unique storytelling visions to life due to the high cost, technical barriers, and inaccessibility of traditional filmmaking tools. Many people have ideas for films and series, but lack the skills, equipment, or resources to turn those ideas into something tangible.
The Solutions
To tackle Spectra’s challenges, I designed an intuitive interface that simplified the movie-making process. Users can curate characters, locations, and styles through clear visual previews and interactive elements. This approach makes creating custom films and series accessible, playful, and enjoyable for a wide range of users.
Welcome to Spectra
The Spectra welcome screen features falling CDs against a vibrant backdrop, complemented by a looping hero video. This design blends nostalgia with a forward-thinking approach to media, offering an engaging entry point that immediately sets the tone for creative exploration.
The home screen features a prompt input area where users can start generating a movie or series in their own words. Below the prompt, users can scroll through featured content generated by others, showcasing community creativity and providing inspiration for new stories.
AI Video Aesthetic Builder UI Workflow
In the movie curation experience, users start by selecting the visual aesthetic, ranging from realism to anime and other stylized looks. A rich set of options is presented in a visual grid, and users can click refresh to generate a new set of aesthetics if they don’t find something they like. This keeps exploration lightweight and fun while still feeling curated.
Movie/Show Description
The movie/show description screen allows users to watch the selected film or episode, read a concise description of the story and characters, and discover similar titles through tailored recommendations. This deepens engagement by helping users understand the narrative context and quickly jump into related content they might enjoy.
Generated Character Selector Screen
This Tinder-style swiping screen lets users easily curate their movie by swiping right on characters, styling options, or locations they want to include, and left to dismiss those they don’t. The familiar interaction pattern lowers friction and turns the customization process into an engaging, game-like experience.
Generating Loader
During the movie generation process, a minimalistic loader appears with the message “Generating.” The simple, focused design keeps users informed without overwhelming them, building anticipation while the system constructs their custom film or series.
Movie Playback Screen
The movie playback screen features a visually engaging blur effect on the video, embracing glassmorphism for a sleek, modern aesthetic. This treatment draws attention to the content while providing a stylish and contemporary backdrop for playback controls and metadata.
The Process
The UX process for Spectra began with defining a user persona and empathy maps to understand the target audience. From there, I crafted the information architecture to ensure a smooth end-to-end flow, which then informed the wireframes and final UI design. The goal at every step was to deliver a seamless experience for crafting AI-generated movies and series.
Persona
During the persona creation phase, I identified the diverse needs and motivations of Spectra’s users. By gathering insights into their goals and frustrations, I developed a detailed persona representing creative individuals who love to experiment with technology, express themselves visually, and tell stories without needing a full production studio behind them.
Empathy Maps
In the empathy mapping phase, I aimed to deepen my understanding of Spectra’s users by visually representing their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Using insights from user research, I mapped what users said, did, thought, and felt during their creative process. This highlighted key motivations, pain points, and desires, allowing me to empathize with their experiences and design around their real needs instead of assumptions.
Ideation
In the ideation phase, I focused on developing a comprehensive information architecture for Spectra. By organizing content and defining core user pathways, I created a clear structure for intuitive navigation across the platform. This foundation allowed users to easily explore movie creation options, from style selection and character customization to playback and discovery.
Wireframes
In the wireframing phase, I translated the information architecture into low-fidelity layouts that showcased Spectra’s core functionality. The focus was on creating a clean, user-friendly interface that simplified movie and TV series creation. Key interactions—such as writing prompts, selecting characters, customizing styles, and outlining plots—were prominently featured. This iterative approach enabled early testing of user flows and interactions before investing in high-fidelity visuals.
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The AI movie creation experience begins with the user writing a prompt.
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Once a visual aesthetic has been selected, the user selects various
aspects of the movie experience through a swiping interface.
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Once all selections have been made, the movie is generated and begins playing.
Reflections
Generative AI Potential: The Spectra project demonstrated the potential of generative AI to empower users in creating their own stories and characters.
User Experience Focus: Focused on developing a seamless user experience that encourages creativity and exploration.
Intuitive Design Insights: Although the project remains a concept, insights from defining the information architecture highlighted the importance of intuitive design in engaging users.
Balancing Aesthetics and Functionality: Learned the necessity of balancing aesthetic appeal with functionality to inspire and support users in crafting unique cinematic experiences.