Luui v. 1.1 Features and Roadmap
Today is the day we’ve received approval for deployment of Luui on the Apple App Store; the culmination of a long first phase. This post will get you up to speed on what Luui is, what it will be, and what the path to getting to the full feature set looks like.
What Luui Is, Today
Luui has been created to provide a better way to use video as a learning medium. We aimed to improve this for both learners, and creators of content. Luui as of launch is a service that is able to handily meet those goals. Here’s a list of what it does:
Luui is a catalogue – we call it a Library – of courses, built by our users, with a scattering of courses that we created as part of that collection.
Luui is also a membership-based collective – we’ll get into that terminology later – where the assumption is that knowledge is to be freely shared, that encourages collaboration, and promotes exploration of topics
That library is a traditional hierarchical system, which runs Library > Course > Chapter. Chapters in courses are really the fundamental unit, and contain their own internal struture.
To begin with, each chapter contains a mix of video clips, explanatory text sections, links, images, and downloads, that can be accessed within the chapter
Video clips are usually short, which focus on short areas of specific interest
These clips can be grouped together in different ways by the course creator(s), to organize them in ways related to topic, theme, or sequence.
All of these are part of the initial release Luui. A couple of other things:
A clip, or group of clips can have their own text, links etc.. that work the same way as the ones at the chapter level
The difference is that Luui presents these in the context of what’s being viewed. Text etc. connected to a clip lets the learner see less text, links, etc, and what they see is directly relevant to what the video shows.
Together, the library’s features form a consistent learning environment meant to build on the strengths of video as a presentation medium. There are things that video does brilliantly: but not everything. These enhancements integrate the other strengths of text, diagrams, tables of data, and so on, to complement the videos.
What may make the biggest difference to users used to continuous timeline, either with or without chapter markers, is the structured way Luui makes getting to exactly the clip section of interest. at the same time, Luui allows play-through of all the clips in a chapter, or even a whole course, in sequence largely indistinguishable from what a normal video offers: but with the enhanced information always there to enrich the experience.
Luui also is the tool to build courses, containing a fully featured sub-app called Builder, which is accessed inside Luui itself. This means that any Luui user can start using Luui to capture the knowledge, skills and experience they have, in a video-centric way, with simple tools that you can learn to use in as hour or two.
Luui lets these courses be distributed – where else but in Luui. This is not the way you might expect. Yes the public catalogue or Library is there, but most courses start off and may continue to exist in private access spaces. A private invitation system in Luui allows course content to be distributed to groups of users that the creator has access to, using emails as the identifier. Only when it makes sense are courses promoted to the Library.
This means that without the need for an elaborate approval process, or crowding the Library with experimentation – which we love, try stuff! – Luui lets creators begin experimenting with how they can adapt the video based learning-focused media they might currently be distributing on YouTube, in Patreon, or other channels, in a better, more structured, easier-to-access, more enriched way
Eventually, these private courses can be promoted to the full Library: but private courses can also be the basis for new forms of monetization that Luui facilitates – more on that at the end.
What To Expect
In its initial launch state, which is v. 1.1, all of this works, with some exceptions. First, the process of moving a course to the Library is – and will for a while remain – a manual process that you’ll need to request from Apptessence, the company whose site you’re reading this on (and the creators of Luui). This will be moved into a process that will depend on volunteers to review and recommend courses for public profile in the Luui library. Over time, this will be related to participation in what Luui offers, and how you use it:
People accepting invitations to your courses will be a factor in approving courses for publication in the Library. So will your participation in review processes – review other’s courses, and it moves your course closer to approval.
All of this is part of the “to come” roadmap. For now, the invitation model is meant to let users get comfortable with Luui, use the key features.
Luui’s Key Feature Works Now
V. 1.1 does something that is a key Luui function, and we want to draw attention to it. A chapter, as the basic unit of a course, and a Challenge, the chapter’s container for one or multiple videos (a chapter can have multiple Challenges), manage videos as a series of short clips. These clips work the way a short section of a YouTube would: here’s where we show you how to do A, before the next section tells you about how to do B. it might not matter which order you see A and B in, but you should know about both before you attempt C.
But what if a clip, or a section of your YouTube is somehow wrong, misleading, confusing, or has a technical problem (maybe the sound is muffled, maybe the focus gets lost at a key point)?
Luui is built to address this. In the Builder, where courses are created and edited, any clip can be replaced at any time: you just tell Luui you’re uploading a replacement for a given clip. After that, the users who arrive at your chapter, even if they’ve previously downloaded the clips for that chapter – including the replaced one – get a clear message that a clip, or several, has been updated, and they can download the replacement.
Now, the course is back in super-useful, non-confusing, easier-to-understand shape, and everyone is happy. With the clip ready to upload, it’s a matter of a few seconds to do this, but it can breathe the life back into the course you worked hard to craft.
This is a key part of Luui: extending the life of courses, notwithstanding changes in things like software versions, product upgrades, regulatory requirements, fashions and fads, or just being better at stuff now. Luui is meant to present learning experiences that learners can rely on, continue to trust, and build value around.
Roadmap (More or Less)
That’s a general view of what Luui can do right now. What is coming is also pretty important to understand. I’ll go over a series of Luui features, some of which are partly implemented, some of which depend on others, to give you an idea of where Luui is going. Most of what I’m aiming to flesh out will happen in the next six months or so.
Areas of Interest (AOI)
At the core of Luui’s discovery system – the way that learners find stuff, basically – is a classification system called AOI. I won'‘t get fully into the detail of what it is, except to say that explanatory videos about AOI can be accessed from the Welcome screen in the app already. Logged in, you can also access the Areas of Interest editor: the core architecture of AOI is already in place.
So what AOI aims to do is allow users, courses, course creators, and learning opportunities to be filtered using an entirely user-defined system, meant to guarantee that if a category exists, then there is a course that matches that category for instance.
in practical terms, you as a learner define the categories of skill and knowledge you’re interested in: If things matching that – like let’s say photography – exist in the library, applying AOI to the library list can help you narrow things down. Getting a bit more specific, like an interest in Studio Photography, in conjunction with colour correction techniques and lighting basics, can not only narrow down the search, but also trigger announcements whenever a new course or chapter is added to what’s in Luui. You hear about them, because your interests match their subject. This can include courses that aren’t even in the Library, but offered as private courses by creators.
For creators, AOI also is a way to classify not only the course they create or contribute to, but also themselves. The same basic editor is used, and in every case, the learner, course, creator or event (more on those in a second) can belong to multiple AOI classifications, of varying levels of specificity. A learner can propose categories: a creator can see these, and decide what areas have the greatest demand, and respond accordingly. The idea is that supply of course content will shape itself to the demand expressed by users.
Instead of a proliferation of multiple intro courses, which of course will tend to have the largest audience, the AOI system might be able to encourage the creation of courses on more advanced, even exotic topics.
All of this, then, has an architecture that Luui already contains, that surfaces at at a few places. But the connections between parts aren’t all there. And some fancy bits where we get multiple category suggestions by users to converge on agreed shared categories and subcategories are needed. The idea is that we will avoid Photography subcategories for “Studio Photography” as well as “In the Studio” and “Studio Setups”., but at the same time we will be able to connect learners who want to know how to photograph cold-blooded animals in the wild: or anything else that has a relatively small but perhaps motivated set of enthusiasts.
Ownership and Provenance
Authorship of courses in Luui is sufficiently complex that traditional models of “I did this, because the first version was my work” fall apart quickly. What if the course has multiple chapters, some by one person, some by another, some working together, and some other people all together?
And what happens after a few years of updates, where, like The Ship of Theseus, all the original clips, or a good proportion of them, have all been replaced? And all the text has been continuously edited to reflect changes by a host of individuals?
There are two questions: one, is “ownership” a redundant concept, and better thought of in terms of “contribution”? This is where Luui has decided to move to, and in particular for courses that are in the Library, universally available.
Instead, forms of attribution and provenance will be built into Luui. It’s possible to delegate the texts that are part of the enhancements to clips to a different person from the one that handles clip updates. The idea is to track these, and attach them as metadata (don’t worry if that means nothing to you), working a bit like the credits in a film. In addition, the AOI system already has a set of cotegories specifically for the creation and editing of Luui courses, so if you contribute to a course in any capacity, that can be recorded, and classified by the Luui Courts AOI’s.
The net effect will be that your contributions will follow you as you contribute, increasing your profile in Luui, which can translates to multiple opportunities within the Luui community. We’ll get into this in more detail, in future posts, but just to let you know that it’s in the works.
Challenge Sharing
This one is the other side of the ownership question, and is probably easier to grasp: If you’re putting a course together, let’s say on a cooking related topic, you might want to include a chapter on “Skills You’ll Need”. What if this includes having sharp knives, for all the chopping and deboning that will follow in your planned chapters?
The idea is that if a course already covers this, and that is in a Challenge (a group of video clips and enhancements), you’ll be able to simply “borrow” the challege, and insert it into your Skills chapter. These borrowed elements will link back to the place they originally come from, so if you borrow from a course that also borrowed it, that backlink will still take the user to that original. That in turn increases the exposure of the original creator of the Challenge to new users, wha are probably interested in what they create content about: good for both sides.
inserting such a borrowed Challenge can be static or dynamic: The difference is that dynamic borrowings update their content along to match the changes made: while static will present it as it was when the loan was made. That can mean information slips out of date: but also provides predictability.
in a feature like this, the challenge is just as much about understanding how people will want to use it: do we need to allow creators to block borrowing? Require explicit permission? The idea is that Luui users and creators will tend to automatically identify the most valuable information, by incorporating it into their own courses: but new creators will also seek to create better, original versions.
Monetization
A big topic', and perhaps the most crucial for some. The essential model Luui is pursuing rejects what we think degrades the learning ethos of Luui as a system. So, no embedded advertiing-related revenue. No algorthimic ad selection, or mandatory watching to earn viewing points. Basically, no advertising. Possibly, we’ll include “as you enter” ads that you watch to help build revenue: but that’s not a given. We want to see what happens when people work together in a system that favours collaboration, sharing, and a relationship between effort made and benefit gained. Call me crazy.
We’d also prefer to keep away from Patreon-like focus on a small group who bear the full burden of financing the entire enterprise, but at the cost of the Luui ethos of freely-available information, always promoting exploration.
The key value we want to capture is the value of the course material, and associated with that, the value of individual expertise in aiding others’ and our own learning. So Luui will at some point, and sooner rather than later, include tools for organizing events that lie in the general area of AMA’s, seminars, workshops or whatever other model that’s based on the presence and responsiveness of a presenter.
Given the state of Luui’s ownership model, or lack thereof, this doesn’t restrict this to the “creator” of a course or chapter, especially as that’s not really a well-defined thing in Luui.
Instead, the idea is that anyone can present a course, essentially as the private invitation model that we’ve already included works. That can be an existing course, or it can be a course assembled from original material, and borrowed components. These courses, which may be on the way to being in the library, or one-time-uses, are the shared course material that participants can share during presentation, and plans exist for interactive features allowing sharing Q&A messaging during these learning sessions.
Our existing invitation model allows a creator of a course to assemble a list of email addresses they have, to invite to access a course under development. For events, a similar pattern will be used, but allowing an event to be internally promoted to Luui’s user base, using again, AOI as the primary filter to distribute these invitations to those most likely to be interested. Over time, this allows far greater reach, and hopefully resolves the issue any creator of anything has, related to outreach of a new offering.
The monetization for these would be largely based on the creator setting their estimation of the event’s value – expected to be a combiniation of what the course provides, and what they can through chat, and other familiar tools in existing tools like Zoom. Expected audience size would factor in, an index of the level of specialization of the topic and the presenter’s expertise. Charging $33 for a two hours workshop, where the participants pay in advance, and the presenter is paid on completion, might attract 30 or 500 partcipants, with revenue in the range $1000 - $17k, for perhaps 3 hours presentation time, and repeatable as desired. If it’s worth $200, the math follows
It’s a market solution that we hope will work. And as an end note, we’d hope that the presenter would later distribute a video recording of the event, probably on YouTube or something similar, as a way to keep the value open to all, at least in some ways: but we will not be in the business of enforcing this. We hope that community norms will emerge, without getting stifling.
Summing Up
This post is meant to manage expectations around Luui’s launch. We’re very interested in what you think.
When Luui is live (soon, think days), the link to the app will be on the home page of this site, and on our substack. At first, the focus will be on gathering a small group of interested potential users, and working with them. That includes one-on-one training sessions, if the fit seems good. We want people to understand what we’re doing.
To that end, Luui will fill up with more and more instructional video on the Welcome Page, and courses on how to use Luui, that are already appearing. We hope the way we’ve presented this is understandable, but that will be a topic of interest for us, leading to ongoing improvements. If you try it, comment here, and let me know how we’re doing.
That said, we will likely try to have Luui an unlisted app for at least a few weeks as i’ve said. This is just to let us be as responsive as we our first users reveal to us we need to be, and not letting too many people down if possible while shaking out the bugs. I’ve lost many nights sleep over this!
But – Luui is real! Believe it!
We look forward to whatever this brings. Thanks for reading!
Dan, Founder of Apptessence/Creator of Luui.