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Learning and Sharing Creative Skills with Short Videos: A Case Study of User
Behavior in TikTok and Bilibili

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 International Association of Societies of Manchester School of Art
Design Research Conference 2019 Manchester Metropolitan University
DESIGN REVOLUTIONS 02-05 September 2019

Learning and Sharing Creative Skills with Short Videos:

A Case Study of User Behavior in TikTok and Bilibili
Qiyang, Zea*; Jung, Heekyoung
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
* zhouqg@mail.uc.edu

SHORT VIDEOS, ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes, have become a popular form
of learning and sharing creative skills such as cooking, drawing, and crafting. Short videos in
social media platforms are reshaping the experience of learning creative skills with visually
engaging materials and communication features to socialize with other users who have
similar interest. However, regardless of their popularity and potential, user behaviors in short
video platforms have been under investigated yet when it comes to learning and practice
creative skills. This study analyzed 1) viewers' comments on selected drawing skill sharing
videos (which resulted in four themes of viewer activities and three types of viewer attitudes)
and 2) creators' activities (which resulted in frequent user models by regression analysis and
dendrogram analysis) in Bilibili and TikTok. User interviews complement the findings from the
quantitative user data to identify the gap between user behavior and expectation in practicing
and sharing drawing skills in short-video sharing platforms. The multi-dimensional data about
user behaviors and expectations are synthesized into five different personas and user journey
maps, leading to the discussion of design recommendations to support creative practice in
short video sharing platforms.

Keywords: short videos; social media; learning and sharing skills; user studies

1 Introduction: Creating and Sharing Knowledge in Short Video Platforms

Contemporary communication and media technologies have enabled learning and sharing
various kinds of knowledge through online communities (Dron & Anderson, 2014). Social
media is a group of Internet-based applications for the creation and exchange of user-
generated content (UGC) (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Also, it is defined as “collaborative
online applications and technologies which enable and encourage participation,
conversation, openness, creation and socialization amongst a community of users” (Bowley,
2009). As social interactions are important attributes to transfer knowledge among
individuals (Polanyi, 1967), social media can facilitate creating and sharing knowledge
among people with similar goals and attitudes (Wahlroos, 2010; Panahi et al., 2012),
generating alternative views and new ideas in online communities (Eteläpelto & Lahti, 2008).
People tend to hold a positive attitude to collaborative learning on social media because they
provide a more interactive experience and motivation during their involvement in knowledge-
related activities (Manca & Ranieri, 2016; Mao, 2014).

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1.1 Short Video Sharing Platforms
Short video platforms have become a popular form of social media applications among
millennials for sharing entertaining contents (Patrick, 2018). Most short video platforms are
mobile applications, where users can create, edit, share, and view short videos. Short videos
have a standardized short duration ranging from few seconds to few minutes; the relative
convenience of content generation, rapid content transmission, and emphasis on sociality
are the distinct attributes of short video platforms (Zhao & Wang, 2015).
TikTok is a popular short video platform, introduced in China and fast growing with over a
half billion users from all around world (Zhong, 2018). The platform enables many short
video specific features such as “Duet” (to create a duet video with another user) and “React”
(to comment with a video) to encourage new collaborative and immersive user experiences.
Bilibili is a Chinese video-sharing website, which was derived from a Japanese video-sharing
website, Niconico, currently with more than 200 million users (Wang, 2016). Videos could
last from few seconds to few hours in Bilibili. Besides short video specific platforms, other
social media platforms also integrate short videos as one of the UGC sharing media forms.
Instagram has released the “Instagram story” feature, which is a personal feed of photos and
videos within Instagram and can only exist for 24 hours (Instagram, 2019). The duration of
each story is limited to 15 seconds. The feature has reached a great success with more than
400 million active users out of its total 1 billion users (Ahmad, 2018).
1.2 Knowledge and Skill Sharing in Videos
Based on the success of entertainment-oriented short video sharing platforms, knowledge
sharing has also become important part of their services. The categories of shared
knowledge on TikTok vary from creative skills and personal experience to explicit knowledge
such as science, technology, and culture (CBNData, 2017). Su (2018) found that users
would have a positive attitude on TikTok because they can learn many skills beneficial in
their daily lives. Learning in the form of shorter video will significantly encourage learners to
take part in task-relevant activities and reduce task-irrelevant activities (Szpunar, 2013).
Videos have been broadly used in knowledge sharing from social media to Massive Online
Open Class (MOOC) platforms. Studies show that viewers are more engaged with
knowledge sharing videos shorter than 3 minutes on MOOC platforms (Guo et al., 2014);
videos less than 5 minutes are likely to succeed in providing a better knowledge-obtaining
experience for users by improving their learning attitude, effectiveness, and engagement
(Hsin & Cigas, 2013). Other studies offered insights to improve users’ learning experience in
video-based MOOC platforms: the ease of access to knowledge in the comment section will
help viewers better understand the content of the video (Monserrat et al., 2014); users on
collaborative video platforms are more willing to share their opinions and knowledge than on
traditional forum platforms (Wu et al., 2018).

2 Research Questions and Methods

Previous studies affirm the potential of short videos as an effective medium for learning
creative skills through social interactions and collaborative content creation and sharing.
However, most of those studies are about video durations and knowledge sharing in MOOC
platforms that have specific learning objectives. User behaviours in short video sharing
platforms have been under-studied when it comes to their potential of creative skill sharing
where the boundary between learning and playing is blurred. Also, there has been little
discussion regarding user experience and interaction design opportunities in popular short
video sharing platforms that serve a huge number of users with different goals and attitudes.
This study is motivated to understand user behaviors specifically related to learning and
practicing creative skills with the following research questions:

• What are user expectations from posting and watching skill-sharing short videos?
• How do they learn and practice creative skills in short video sharing platforms?
• What may be gaps between their expectations and actual experience in short video
sharing platforms regarding learning and practicing creative skills?
• How can we understand user behaviors and improve their experiences of learning,
practicing, and sharing creative skills in short video sharing platforms?

2.1 Data Collection and Analysis

There are numerous video contents and different kinds of user activity and profile data
available in short video sharing platforms, and it is challenging to define the scope of data
collection and analysis. Our research process has been exploratory by selecting specific
video posts shared as public knowledge in popular short video platforms and sampling
relevant user groups based on their reactions to those videos for further investigation.
[Figure 1] overviews our research process that consists of different data collection and
analysis methods.

Figure 1. The Research Process.

 1) Platform and Video Selection: We selected drawing videos from three popular
platforms as a topic for this case study: TikTok, Bilibili, and Instagram. According to
the search results we retrieved from each platform on April 2, 2019, the videos with a
“drawing” hashtag (“画画” in Chinese) have been viewed 142 million times on
Instagram and 6.9 billion times on TikTok. We selected highly ranked videos tagged
with “drawing” and “drawing tutorial” in each platform: top 2 videos from Bilibili 1, 2, top
3 videos from TikTok 3, 4, 5, and top 3 videos from Instagram 6, 7, 8.

2) Comment Analysis: We collected 1,249 public comments in total from the 8

selected video posts and analyzed their contents and attitudes with a focus on user
motivations for learning and sharing creative skills from the videos. We identified
some users who are more actively participating in skill sharing and supporting based
on their commenting contents and attitudes to the selected drawing videos.

3) User Profile and Activity Analysis: We traced the public profile and activity data of
the users identified from the comment analysis. 13 kinds of user data were collected
from 198 Bilibili users [Table 1] and 8 kinds of data from 81 TikTok users [Table 2].
No personal information was further collected or associated with the online public
profile. With Tableau 9 and Excel formulas, we conducted regression analysis to find
out any statistically significant relations between some user data and dendrogram
analysis to identify influential factors (i.e., knot) and cluster distinct user groups with
those knots as their main characteristics (Qu et al., 2015). The dendrogram was
resulted in 52 clusters in Bilibili and 16 clusters in TikTok that divide distinct user
groups according to their levels of participation in content creation and sharing.

4) Pilot Interview: We contacted 81 users who are grouped in the 16 primary clusters
in TikTok for a pilot in-depth interview; 12 of them voluntarily responded back. They
shared more details about their purposes of viewing and sharing drawing videos,
experiences in TikTok, and expectations regarding their creative practice in short
video platforms by direct messages in TikTok, not sharing any other personal
information (In average 300 messages exchanged for 30 minutes per interview).
Responders’ ages range from 13 to 25 with their backgrounds from middle school
student, to graduate student, to user experience designer, and to software developer.

5) User Persona and Journey Map: We conducted thematic analysis of the interview
responses and generated five themes by highlighting worth-noted points from them
inductively (Boyatzis, 1998). Each theme is developed into a persona and user
journey map with specific experience phases in short video sharing platforms. Design
recommendations are discussed to support various user expectations regarding
creative practice in consideration of the users’ broader life styles and goals.

1
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21462790?t=47
2
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av33688833
3
http://v.douyin.com/2W2KHH/
4
http://v.douyin.com/2WAhEj/
5
http://v.douyin.com/2WDGwN/
6
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqkllsRl2ca/
7
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqlRqofgaVQ/
8
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb-F36qAgVl/
9
https://www.tableau.com/
Table 1 Users' data category on Bilibili (*Top Three Knots)
Data Category User Data Justification

User’s LV ranges from level 1 to level 6. LV is depended

User’s membership on the frequency of Bilibili usage and the amount of
User status on level (LV)* users’ experiences, which can be earned by users’
the Platform involvement on Bilibili.

The number of a user's followers can represent the

User’s followers*
individual's social influences.
Drawing-related
It reflects the knowledge-document behaviors of users.
posts user saved*
Users can earn the Bilibili coins through multiple
Knowledge- Drawing-related involvements on Bilibili. User can use the coin to pay
consuming posts user paid others’ posts to show the payer’s support and
activities. acknowledgment.
On Bilibili, “tag” consists of a few words that represents
Drawing-related a topic. It contains many related resources within the
tags user followed platform. Users use tags for efficient information-
searching
Knowledge Drawing-related
N/A
conversion, image posts
creation, and Drawing-related
N/A
sharing activities. video posts

Table 2 Users' data category on TikTok (*Top Three Knots)

Data Category User Data Justification
User Status on The number of a user's followers can represent the
User’s followers*
the Platform individual's social influences.
Drawing-related
In TikTok, “like” is a function of saving. It reflects the
posts users liked
knowledge-document behaviors of users.
(i.e., L) *

The ratio of the

Knowledge-
number of drawing-
consuming Like is a behavior that happened very often and random.
related posts that a
activities It will be more accurate to apply L/A to prove if
user like to the
individual’s knowledge sharing/learning intentions are
number of all posts
stronger than others.
that a user liked
(i.e., L/A) *

Knowledge
conversion, Drawing-related
N/A
creation, and posts
sharing activities

3 Research Findings
This section summarizes the findings from the comment analysis, user profile and activity
analysis, and pilot in-depth interviews. In this course of multi-dimensional data analysis,
primary user groups are specified to further investigate their behaviors related to learn,
practice, and share drawing skills in short video sharing platforms.
3.1 Four Comment Categories and Three Commenting Attitudes
Madden et al. (2013) categorized YouTube comments into three categories based on their
relevance to the videos: 1) comments related to video content, 2) comments related to video
context, and 3) general comments that do not relate to video content or context. Building
upon this general categorization scheme, we specified the three comment categories with a
focus on user participation in learning and sharing drawing skills. Below are the reframed
comment categories that represent four different types of comments:

• Information type: Comments elaborating on or requesting explicit information

directly related to the posted video, providing an objective statement or point of view.
(e.g., “So, brows decide the styles of eyes.”)

• Feedback type: Comments asking for more information about how to apply the video
to practice or feedback to the commenter’s work created based on the instruction of
the posted video. (e.g., “I got stuck in drawing ellipse.”)

• Opinion type: Comments assessing the quality of the posted video, stating the
commenter’s subjective, often critical, point-of-view. (e.g., “this is useless”)

• General conversation type: Comments initiating or continuing conversations to

interact with other viewers and share information, often not directly related to the
video content. (e.g., “Thank you for your tutorials”)

Apart from the content types, the collected comments showed three different attitudes that
reflect the commenter’s engagement in learning and sharing drawing skills:

• Constructive and positive attitude: Comments showing interests and curiosity

directly related to video content and context, generating questions and discussions to
apply the video content to different contexts, share more information, and build
knowledge about creative practice (Fosnot & Perry, 1996; Madden et al., 2013).

• Judgmental and negative attitude: Comments related to video content or context

but not contributing to skill-sharing or knowledge construction nor acknowledging the
shared content, mostly aiming to criticize and judge.

• Irrelevant attitude: Comments not related to video content or context and irrelevant
to the subject or topic of the video, showing ambiguous or no learning intention.

Table 3 shows that the general conversation type of comment is most prevalent (mostly
taking a judgmental and negative attitude), while the feedback type of comments is the least
in most videos (mostly taking a constructive and positive attitude). The opinion type of
comments often shows an irrelevant attitude to learning and practicing creative skills. The
overall statistics imply that most comments are intended simply to start a conversation and
interact with other users, not necessarily to learn and practice creative skills. Design
opportunities lie in supporting this relatively small but highly motivated group of users by
prioritizing to reveal and reward their constructive, content specific comments from the
majority of irrelevant ones.
Table 3 The percentage data of the comments categorized by the two classification schemes.
General
Total Information Feedback Opinion
Conversation
Constructive,
29% 42.81% 29.94% 14.97% 28.14%
Positive
Judgemental,
52% 15.56% 0.0% 19.70% 64.40%
Negative
Irrelevant 19% 20.81% 0.9% 54.75% 26.70%

Total 100% 24.68% 9.32% 24.07% 45.46%

3.2 Three User Groups: Content Browsers, Learner Creators, and Creators
We selected another drawing video respectively from TikTok10 and Bilibili11 and validated our
comment classification scheme by applying it to analyze the comments from the two videos.
We also identified active users who made information and feedback types of comments with
a constructive and positive attitude to each video; tracked their public profile and activity data
to investigate their behaviors related to drawing practice in each platform: 13 kinds of data
from 198 Bilibili users [Table 1] and 8 kinds of data from 81 TikTok users [Table 2]. First,
regression analysis revealed how the two platforms afford different user experiences of
creative skill sharing:

• In Bilibili, the number of each user’s video posts and the number of the user’s image
posts are highly associated with each other (with r > 0.7; R2 = 0.52; p<0.0001).
Users who post work in one format is likely to post in another format. Meanwhile, the
total number of image posts (1,257) significantly exceeds that of video posts (193).
Also, the number of likes received per video post (i.e., L/P), comments received per
video post (i.e., C/P), and view counts per video post (i.e., V/P) present a statistically
significant correlation, while the number of users’ video posts, L/P, C/P, and V/P are
not statically associated. It indicates that users tend to show their appreciation to a
video post through multiple reactions after viewing it. However, productive users do
not necessarily receive prolific recognitions corresponding to their creative effort.

• In TikTok, the number of shares per post (i.e., S/P), L/P, and C/P present a
statistically significant positive association. It indicates that viewers more likely
reward the video uploader with multiple reactions than once. The number of each
user’s followers does not statistically associate with the user’s L/P, C/P and S/P. This
may be due to TikTok’s decentralized video recommendation mechanism, which
pushes to reveal more user-generated contents to other users, equally regardless of
the number of followers. In this way, video posts of the users who comment to
another post are more likely to receive as much recognition as influencers who have
much more followers on TikTok than on other platforms.

Second, dendrogram analysis resulted in 52 clusters in Bilibili (1 – 29 users per cluster) and
16 in TikTok (1 – 17 users per cluster) that divide distinct user groups in each platform. The
mean number of users in all clusters from both platforms is 3. Based on this mean value of
3, clusters that have more than 3 users are counted as primary user groups, which resulted

10
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av40642497/
11
http://v.douyin.com/jHaCWU/
in 15 primary user groups on Bilibili [Figure 2] and 7 primary groups on TikTok [Figure 3].
The top three knots that cluster primary user groups in each platform are marked in Table 1
and 2. We combined those primary clusters from both platforms into three user groups
according to their browsing, reacting, and sharing patterns related to drawing practice [Table
4]: 1) Content Browsers, 2) Learner Creators, and 3) Creators.

Table 4 Data of percentages of the three user groups on Bilibili and TikTok.
Platform Content Browser Learner Creator Creator Total Number
Bilibili 30% 33% 5% 198
TikTok 36.7% 20.7% 19.5% 81

Figure 2. The dendrogram of Bilibili users.

Figure 3. The dendrogram of TikTok users.

3.2.1 Content Browser Group:
This group of users takes up a large number of users in the primary clusters (30% in Bilibili;
36.7% in TikTok) but shows less activities related to drawing practice than the average
users, rarely creating a drawing video post or reacting to others’ work. Majority of users in
this group have the value of LV (44 out of 60) and the number of followers (33 out of 60)
below or equal to the mean value on Bilibili [Figure 2]. Similarly, all the TikTok users in this
group show the number of L and the value of L/A below the mean [Figure 3]. They are
involved in limited social activities such as searching or viewing drawing-specific videos,
following other users, commenting, and liking, which require minimum commitments.

3.2.2 Learner Creator Group:

This group of users have knowledge learning goals and interests on specific topics such as
figure drawing or landscape painting. The majority of users in this group have more than 10
(mean value) pieces of work saved on Bilibili and higher L/A or L than the mean value on
TikTok. It implies that Learner Creator Group would like to view and archive certain types of
videos according to their learning goals and interact with others by liking or commenting to
other posts but rarely post their creative work.

3.2.3 Creator Group:

This group of users have posted their drawing videos in social platforms, active in creating,
converting, and sharing skills [Figure 2 & 3]. Table 4 shows that on TikTok, the percentages
of Learner Creator and Creator Groups in the primary clusters are similar, but that of Creator
Group is significantly greater on TikTok than on Bilibili. Each Creator tends to have more
followers than average on TikTok. This echoes to the results of user’s behaviour patterns
discussed in regression analysis above (in the section 3.2). Users tend to follow productive
creators and (actively) react to their work in TikTok.

3.3 Pilot Interview with Selected Users from Each Group

As a pilot interview, we sent direct messages to the users from the three primary groups in
TikTok (total of 81) for open-ended questions about their experience of learning and
practicing creative skills through short videos. 12 of them voluntarily responded back: 2 out
of 12 users are from the Content Browser Group; 4 out of 12 users are from the Learner
Creator Group; 6 out of 12 users are from the Creator group. Their responses are
summarized according to each group’s purposes, experiences and expectations in learning
and sharing their drawing practice in TikTok.

3.3.1 Main purposes in learning and sharing drawing videos

The Content Browser Group commonly express that they are busy and stressed in daily
lives. They have interest in drawing but do not plan to practice. It is relaxing for them to just
watch creative practice by others. They enjoy learning more about drawing skills and tips,
through which they could also socialize with other users online. The Learner Creator Group
are more committed to learn drawing skills by watching drawing videos for self-learning and
collecting inspirations. The Creator Group mentioned that online friendship and social
recognition are the drivers of their drawing practice; they actively create and share their work
for seeking more social interactions and recognition from others.

3.3.2 User experiences and expectations in short video sharing platforms

The Content Browser Group think TikTok provided them with immersive and engaging
watching experiences. In particular, they appreciate the short durations of videos, fitting in
the limited free time of their busy life. However, they doubt the credibility of the contents
posted by other users: Is it worth watching? Is this a right or better way of practicing
drawing? Is this video appropriate to my drawing level?

The Learner Creator Group think learning by watching TikTok videos is efficient because of
their short durations and rich contents. They are also satisfied with the video quality on
TikTok and expect to discover more. They often apply what they watched and create their
own drawings but rarely post because they are afraid of receiving negative and
untrustworthy evaluation by public.

The Creator Group like the decentralized content distribution mechanism of TikTok as it
exposes their work to more users. While it is easy to watch short videos, they often find it
hard for them to create one because of its limited duration. A more guided process to plan
and edit their drawing session in a short duration would be useful.

All three groups have complaints about current commenting and searching features in
TikTok. They think the current comments section fail to provide an efficient way of retrieving
and archiving key information from videos. Also, it was a common response that short video
sharing platforms need practical and ethical guidance in posting and reacting to user
generated contents to create quality contents and supportive online communities of practice.

4 User Personas, Journey Map, and Design Opportunities

Persona is a fictitious and concrete representation of target users, describing their
characteristics and behavior patterns (Pruitt & Adlin, 2006). This chapter synthesizes the
insights from the multi-dimensional user data into characteristic user behaviors and
expectations based on thematic analysis. The insights are developed into five personas and
corresponding user journey maps to illustrate their experience in short video platforms.

Through the thematic analysis, the coded themes of the interview data from the two
respondents in the Content Brower Group participated are similar and merged to create user
persona 1: Content Browser. Also, the coded themes of the interview data from the four
users in the Learner Creator are similar and merged to create user persona 2: Learner
Creator. Additionally, we found differences in the coded themes of the data from the six
users in the Creator group; further categorized them to develop 3 personas: Fan Art Creator
(N=3), Recognition-Seeking Creator (N=2), and Influential Creator (N=1).

Based on different behaviors of the five personas, we re-mapped the findings from the user
profile and activity data to specify the phases that each user persona would experience in a
short video sharing platform for their drawing practice. We also integrated the key phases of
user journeys across the five personas and discussed the design recommendations for each
phase in the integrated journey map [Figure 4]: 1) Creative Practice Through Social
Interaction, 2) Video Previews and Comment Categories, 3) Personal Tracking, Assessment,
and Guidance for Creative Practice.
Figure 4. Five personas, user integrated journey map, and the implementation of the three design opportunities.

4.1. Creative Practice Through Social Interaction

While social recognition and responses from other users are vital elements of learning and
sharing creative practice in short video platforms, Chapter 3.3 shows that users would not
always receive enough recognition for their work. This study proposes three design
considerations to encourage users to create and share work on short video platforms. First,
platforms could assign deeper meanings to value video posts beyond clicking “Like”, for
example, by donating monetary currency. Bilibili users donate “Bilibili coin” to a video post to
express their conscious appreciation compared to “Like”. It meets their need to more tangibly
contribution to the creators and the need of creators who eager for meaningful feedback.
Second, platforms could nurture the community to admire and value others’ practice and
progresses so that more users, like the Learner Creator group would feel more comfortable
and supportive to create and share content. For example, Facebook has enabled users to
express varied reactions to a post in different emoji icons, which diversify their feedback
beyond “Like” or “Dislike”. Third, platforms could help creators discover trending challenges
for creative practice in relation to their learning goals and connect to other users with similar
interest. [Figure 4] shows that this strategy highly targets the problems of multiple user
groups in Watching phase and Sharing phase.

4.2. Video Previews and Comment Categories

While short videos are engaging to watch, the research shows that there are opportunities to
improve user experience of browsing and archiving video content. First, platforms can
provide multiple media formats to describe the videos more accurately in the preview so that
users could expect the content before viewing. Second, platforms can provide a rating
system to guide skill level requirement of the videos. Third, Chapter 3.1 shows that users
with different learning attitudes would preferred different types of comments. Platforms can
thus provide a comment categorization and a key information-finding feature for viewers to
browse specific types of comments based on their preferences. [Figure 4] shows that this
strategy highly targets the problems of user groups with knowledge learning intentions, like
the Content Browser, the Learner Creator, and the Fan Art Creator, as well as user group
who are with knowledge sharing intentions, like the Influential Creator group.

4.3. Personal Tracking, Assessment, and Guidance for Creative Practice

The research also shows that users encounter many challenges in continuing their practice
on short video platforms. Thus, we recommend a learning evaluation and situation prediction
system, with which platforms can provide features to track user’s activities, progress, and
achievements in learning and practicing drawing skills. These strategies aim to build users'
learning confidence and keep them motivated on the knowledge learning. Allow users to
customize the categories of archiving or tagging videos beyond “like” so that users could
easily organize and retrieve them according to their learning levels and goals. This custom
categorization could further expand to an adaptive system that automatically generates
appropriate category labels and recommends related video posts for archived videos. A
template to guide which process to follow to complete a drawing tutorial video and preview
the potential outcomes of the work they are planning to create can be useful for beginners.
Also, assessing the quality of a drawing posted in a video can allow user to track their
progress and for other viewers to consider the quality as their resource for learning. [Figure
4] shows that the users with needs of video watching—The Content Browser, the Learner
Creator, and the Fan Art Creator—would be benefited from this strategy.

5. Discussion and Conclusion

This study was motivated to understand users’ creative practice in short video sharing
platforms and collected popular videos of drawing practice selected from each platform (3
from TikTok, 2 from Bilibili, and 3 from Instagram). Then this study collected viewers’ public
comments to selected short videos and developed two new classification schemes:
comment characteristics (information, feedback, opinion, general conversation) and
commenters’ attitudes (constructive and positive, judgmental and negative, and irrelevant).
The statistics show that that less users are actually participating knowledge-related activities
(30%) while viewing drawing videos in these platforms by leaving information and feedback
types of comments [Table 3]. We also found that those users are more likely to show a
constructive and positive knowledge learning and sharing attitude and focused them as a
main target group. While our design recommendation for comment categorization targets at
this specific group of active users, there are far more passive users who browse and watch
videos but rarely leave any comment (i.e., Content Browser). Personalized search and
archival of videos and setting and tracking learning goals could lower the barrier of creating
and sharing skill-practicing videos in these platforms.

This study further tracked and analyzed public data from Bilibili and TikTok users that can
reflect knowledge-related activities. Using regression analysis, we uncovered that as Bilibili
supports creating and uploading multi-media file formats, users who post more videos are
more likely to post more images as well. Users prefer to post their drawing creations in
image format versus video format since sharing drawings by images is easier. Another result
showed that TikTok is a decentralized UGC community, where users receive reactions and
feedback based on the quality and quantity of their work, regardless of the number of
followers they have. These findings are further discussed above as design strategies to
facilitate user creation and interaction in short-video platforms. This study also finds three
major user groups through the patterns of users’ data by dendrogram: Content Browser
group, Learner Creator group and Creator group. The percentage of Creator group (19.5%)
on TikTok is greater than on Bilibili (5%), showing that more TikTok users create and share
their work as diverse posts are revealed to public regardless of the popularity of creators.

Based on the user group categories synthesized by the quantitative research, this study also
conducted pilot interviews with 12 TikTok users via direct messages to further understand
experience of knowledge learning and sharing through the platform. The results are
synthesized into five distinct types of personas and user journey and experience phases for
each persona, concluding with three design recommendations: 1) promote creative
practice through social interaction, 2) provide video previews and comment
categories, and 3) support for personal tracking, assessing, and guiding creative
practice. In summary, the findings of this study imply the potential of new learning models
with short videos and social media platforms. The five personas and their user journey maps
will provide a constructive foundation to design new platform services and experiences for
collaborative learning of creative skills. The methods used for analyzing and identifying
distinct user groups could be applied to other online user experience research in the future.

Still, this study has access to only public user data and it is hard to generalize the findings.
Also, we do not have a concrete understanding about the expectations and behaviors of
passive users who only watch videos for personal practice but do not engage in any online
activities. Broader user recruiting and face-to-face interview could lead to in-depth
conversations regarding users’ expectations and suggestions for improving their learning
experience in short video sharing platforms. In future work, the personas and user journey
maps could be validated with more comprehensive data from a larger sample and also
applied for ideating and developing new short video platform services to support creative
practice.
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