Telestream

"ClipMail Pro" and "ClipExpress"

 

Form and Function was brought in at a fairly early stage to help define the product and simplify the user experience for a new and still small startup in Grass Valley, California.

The work consisted of conception, design and art production of touchscreen interface for the Telestream ClipMail Pro and Express.
The ClipMail line can be thought of as a store-and-forward "videofax" system.
This internet device allows ordinary office personnel to rapidly offload and transfer large digital video streams and/or convert one standard (US NTSC) to another (EU PAL) in realtime.

Home, where the art is To Top of PageClipMail interfaces

Our goal: obliterate the advantage traditional overnight-shipping.

Professional video production typically ships broadcast quality tapes criss-cross country, and continents.

A guiding design principle was the simplicity of the overnight shipping form.
The audience could be as novice as a mail-room clerk more used to forwarding envelopes overseas than (essentially) dubbing videoclips.
This product was meant to fit into both the corporate office and editing bay and was focused on a very few specific tasks: easy digitization and logging, forwarding of material all across industry standard TCP/IP networks.

We gave it a warm, but austere tone and relatively light touch on the oversized icons meant to be jabbed at by both pudgy and manicured fingers. Here is the reconfigurable soft keypad adaptable to most languages.
Great efforts went into making the interface direct and untechnical as a video related product could possibly be. The whole thing had to be as simple as sucking a tape up like a video-vacuum for bundling to other locales, yet conform to the highest video standards in order to compete against the need for real production tapes sent overnight by courier. The front-desk receptionist should be able to process a file as easily as Fed-X one with the paperwork of a FAX.

Additional product ID and other marketing material was also developed at this time. This began as a splash screen for the software and became a piece of the larger marketing material colage and brand ID.

{I liked the model so much I married her -JG-}

Application splash screen and branding 

Home, where the art is Folio examples skills Timeline Vitae Contact Form and Funciton To Start of Page  

 

What more can be said except the product is shipping today, a decade later, essentially unchanged.
Turnkey non-linear videofax delivery systemA fresh coat of pixels and some serious scientific feedback from user studies would be a lovely exercize, but in an age of brittle software and fickle tastes Form and Function is proud of the work done here and the value Telestream accrued by our efforts.

 

The "ClipMail" & "Express" Crew:
Shawn Carnahan - technology officer
Steve Tilly - engineering
Paul Siegal - project lead
Jonathan Gibson - interface design & art
Jennie Gale - logic and workflow