Wistia, 2022

Wistia, 2022

Wistia, 2022

Optimize video CMS to drive 450+ monthly increase in uploads

Optimize video CMS to drive 450+ monthly increase in uploads

Helping marketers manage and scale their video libraries at Wistia.

Helping marketers manage and scale their video libraries at Wistia.

Overview

Overview

Overview

Make Wistia the true central repository for our customers’ video content. I was the Design Lead on the Organize Manage team, focused on Wistia’s cloud-based video CMS. My product area was to securely store and manage our customer’s videos and help our customers scale.

Key Results

Key Results

Key Results

  • Streamlined uploading: increased Zoom import usage by 18% and recurring monthly increase of 450 media items added to Wistia

  • Improved discoverability: increased Channels created by 94% and Record usage increased by 19%

Role, Team, Duration

Role, Team, Duration

Role, Team, Duration

End-to-end design, Discovery Workshops, Research & Concept Testing, UX / UI Design

1 Product Designer (me), 3 Developers, 1 Product Manager, 1 Product Lead, 1 Design Manager

3-4 months

Business Goals

Our team's offering enabled customers to succeed as they scale. We were focused on high-volume accounts with thousands of media for retention and growth, such as Nordstrom and Sephora.

Our OKRs focused on supporting this scale:

  • OKR 1: Increase average monthly active users per customer

  • OKR 2: Increase average new media added per month

  • OKR 3: Increase average media per account

Understanding the Market & User Goals

Aligning Product and Design

With a new team, I wanted to build a shared understanding with our Product Manager on how Wistia compared to the market. I proposed and directed a competitive analysis workshop to our Product Owners, auditing our competitors' key library organization flows.

Competitive Analysis Workshop - Themes

I synthesized our workshop and found these themes:

  • Files can exist without folders

  • Quick uploading

  • Detailed metadata

I prioritized management features to identify what was worth concept testing:

85%

of competitors had a nested folder hierarchy

85%

of competitors have separate files / folders

70%

of competitors prioritized file recency

Competitive Analysis Synthesis

Customer Feedback

I dug through 2022-2017 customer feedback. The key finding was our existing Projects + Sections structure not giving users enough flexibility and them wanting a nested folder structure. But this feedback wasn’t specific to our customers with high-volume libraries.

Customer Feedback

I dug through 2022-2017 customer feedback. The key finding was our existing Projects + Sections structure not giving users enough flexibility and them wanting a nested folder structure. But this feedback wasn’t specific to our customers with high-volume libraries.

2017 - 2022 customer feedback on Wistia's library hierarchy

Generative Research & Concept Tests

It was essential to understand how users organize their content to ultimately identify key pain points and future opportunities to define a course for work.

Library Messiness

Library Messiness

Library Messiness

  • 100% of users found library organizing is time-consuming & tedious

  • "I can’t move large sets of media around my account"

  • "I don’t know which media needs to be Deleted or Archived"

Identify media

Identify media

Identify media

  • 83% users' don't know where their content is

  • "My teammates don't use Wistia, which puts more dependency [on me]." Fewer users

Workflow simplicity

Easy

Easy

  • 83% of users don't know what their in-progress work is —> have to dig through account

  • Users want to easily jump back into their workflow

  • Uploading content to Wistia requires a cumbersome multi-step process

  • Uploading content to Wistia requires a

  • Uploading content to Wistia requires a

Technical Contraints —> Pivot

Engineering found that nested folders is high risk with big data model work. Making changes would impact other Pillars' features that rely on our existing data model.


This complexity was not worth the impact. My PM and I discussed a new approach improve the UX without re-doing the data model

Small wins to target big pains + new OKRs

To move fast, deliver value, and be ambitious, I proposed solutions that focused on the key customer problems we learned from the Evaluative Research and pushed our new OKRs.


With our Product Manager and Dev Lead, we prioritized wins based on customer impact and dev effort.

Quickly upload & facilitate organization

Pain: organizing at the upload stage is a hassle

  • I can't assign videos to a specific Section when uploading

  • Having to drag and drop media while scrolling down hundreds of media is difficult


Solution: Add Upload Button to the Content Library

  • Drive organization at the top of users' creation flow

  • Give users control to upload media to their existing Project Sections

Old

CTA —> modal, no ability to upload

New

CTA —> dropdown to highlight features, incl. uploading

Upload, Flow Walkthrough

Easily identify WIP videos

Pain: Can't find and identify which media is in-progress

  • My project is huge, I don’t know where my vieo is

  • I have 10 iterations of the same video — which has the new intro/outro?


Solution: Grid View

  • Scrub through the thumbnail storyboard to view the video's content

  • Quickly browse to visually identify media

  • Highlight duration to better understand media differences

Old

List View

New

Grid View

Quickly upload & facilitate organization

Pain: organizing at the upload stage is a hassle

  • I can't assign videos to a specific Section when uploading

  • Having to drag and drop media while scrolling down hundreds of media is difficult


Solution: Add Upload Button to the Content Library

  • Drive organization at the top of users' creation flow

  • Give users control to upload media to their existing Project Sections

Old

CTA —> modal, no ability to upload

New

CTA —> dropdown to highlight features, incl. uploading

Seeing Results

Seeing Results

Launched 7 features around Content Organization, Uploading, Identifying Media, Cost Management, and Navigation:

Affected OKR: Increase avg new media added per month ✅

Affected OKR: Increase avg media per account ✅

Launched 7 features around Content Organization, Uploading, Identifying Media, Cost Management, and Navigation:

Affected OKR: Increase avg new media added per month ✅

Affected OKR: Increase avg media per account ✅

~450

media added per month, recurring

18%

increase in Zoom Import usage

23%

increase in Live Events created

94%

increase in Channels Created

19%

increase in Record tool usage

Impact

Our team set an example for a company culture shift that focused on shipping iteratively, increasing velocity, and being ambitious

I used our User Research to co-create a centralized research repository, making company-wide research actionable and accessible

Reflections

1) De-risk early and often.

2) Keep data-backed opportunities in your back pocket.

3) Balance big bets with incremental wins.

janpolack@gmail.com

janpolack@gmail.com