How to Leverage Multimedia Folders

Storyblocks recently upgraded the Folders feature to support multiple media types, making them a much more flexible tool for organizing stock assets for video projects. Keep reading to find out more about how you can save time and stay more organized using Multimedia Folders when gathering assets for your project.

The problem we solved for

At Storyblocks, we value the voice of the customer when it comes to informing our product roadmap. We held a design sprint last year and spent a full week talking to creators and walking through their workflow from start to finish. We dug into their pain points throughout the process to understand areas of friction where we may be able to assist, specifically in the asset gathering stage of their workflow.

We recognized improving our Folders feature as an opportunity to quickly address some of their pain points. Folders allow users save and organize Storyblocks assets while they search, so that they can quickly revisit their favorites and keep track of which assets they’ve used in projects. Before, our Folders feature was limited by some technical constraints that required users to create video-only, audio-only, and image-only folders. By making folders support multiple media types, we were able to allow users to organize in the format they choose, in addition to providing more time-savings through batch action controls.

Our research process

We’ve recently reflected on conversations we’ve had with creators over the years and the role that Storyblocks plays in their creative workflow. Throughout these conversations, we identified an opportunity to double down on our efforts to help creators meet the growing demand for more video content. In addition to bolstering our growing library with high-quality, relevant content, we created a work stream dedicated solely to tools to help creators be more efficient in their workflow. The goal of this work stream would be to help eliminate the tedious parts of a video project that detract time and energy from doing what matters most: telling stories.

We set up additional customer interviews and surveyed hundreds of customers about Folders. We learned that customers currently using Folders experienced more efficiency gains than those who don’t. We sourced qualitative feedback on what we could do to make Folders even more useful in their workflow and found a lot of common themes and patterns that aligned with some of our own hypotheses and ideas.

While we were eager to address and implement many of them, we had to narrow our focus to the fundamental changes that would help customers be more efficient in their workflow, as soon as possible. We set out to deliver an MVP (minimum viable product) that addressed a fundamental need and desire among all users: flexibility to organize their multimedia assets however they want.

The benefits

We learned that many of our customers longed to gather and organize their assets in a project-based way, keeping all of the project’s assets in one place, regardless of media type.

It would make it easier to track what assets were used in which projects, which was important for a number of reasons, including preventing repetition of assets in multiple projects across the organization, and keeping track of all the rights and clearances for assets used in a project.
For members of creative teams on our Business Plan, it would enable teammates to collaborate more easily on gathering assets for projects.
A project’s assets would be more easily shareable with clients and teammates for feedback — they would only need to send one link for an entire project’s assets, rather than three separated by content type.

We also learned that customers like to create a home for their assets that are readily accessible for them or their team to use in videos.

Sometimes when customers browse our content, they come across an asset that resonates with them but don’t have an immediate opportunity for use in their project. So they save it for later for when the opportunity arises, and then can easily duplicate it and add it to project folders when they use it and keep track of when and where it was used.
It enables them to create a readily available “brand-approved” repository for teammates and themselves to draw from, which can speed up the search and feedback process with teammates and clients.

We’re looking forward to providing more opportunities to unlock workflow efficiency gains for our customers throughout their creative journey. In the meantime, we encourage all members to check out our new and improved multimedia folders to help organize their creative assets more efficiently and scale their creative output.