Freezefram.es

Our faces are capable of expressing so much that often words are unnecessary. We are always posting YouTube videos on social media with the intention of eliciting a reaction from our friends. Instead of telling them that a video is hilarious or sad, why not show them? Or better yet, see how they felt watching it? These questions provided the motivation for Amelia Hancock, Matt Richardson, and I when we built our final project for Designing Conversational Spaces.

Our project, Freezefram.es, provides a platform for sharing YouTube videos and the reactions of people watching them. It works best for videos that have a surprise ending. It’s a website built using Flask (Python) on the backend, and JavaScript (primarily Popcorn.js and JQuery) for handling videos.

There are two ways that users can navigate through our site. The first way, the user selects a video from YouTube, enters the link, and then chooses a time code to snap a picture of someone watching the video. They can then take a picture of themselves and share the link to our site with friends in order to see their reactions.

Users who receive the link navigate through our site the second way. They watch the video, and it snaps a picture of them at the time code specified by the previous user. They can then view their reaction and the reactions of others during the same time code.