Each Valentine’s Day the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy held a “bitter haiku” contest. Year after year Gary Krieg, W+K’s Head of Production, was struck by how much storytelling fit into the 5-7-5 syllable structure, and he was also impressed at the level of creativity coming in from the entire office. Which made him ask the question, “what would a visual haiku look like?”
So began the hykoo video app, founded by Gary Krieg (Chief Content Officer) and Yoni Bloch (Interlude’s CEO), co-founded by Udi Pladott (CTO) and Assaf Dagan (CCO), and is incubated by interlude and Tribeca enterprises (Robert De Niro/Jane Rosenthal). The team is led by CEO James Marciano, and apart from the three co-founders, the UI/UX designer is Xiaoye Lin, and engineer Chris Conti. I asked Dagan to tell me how the app is appeasing its apperators.
What did you hope to gain from the app?
We wanted to introduce a new format, one that doesn’t make the user choose between describing (using text, like microbloging) and showing – like other visual applications — and wanted to explore the possibility of telling stories in a text/video hybrid, that does not exist otherwise.
What do you want the users to take away?
First of all, to enjoy sharing moments in a hykoo form. then, that creating a story isn’t very complicated, once you have structure and a point of view. It’s simple, and fun, and we’d like users to adopt this format and create engaging hykoos. What are your plans for marketing and sustaining the project?
We’re seeding hykoo in the creative community to create engaging content and attract a grassroots social adoption. We’re also in discussions with a wide range of editorial partners to use hykoo as part of their social strategy.
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