Vimeo is a video platform community for novice and indie creators. Currently you can upload videos on the web and mobile apps but there is no way to upload plus share your videos on mobile.

1. Design 2 features in one flow

2. Design for a brand new iOS without insight into that iOS

3. Android and Apple styling

4. Prompt for access to camera roll, and contacts

We learned that the feature was mostly successful, there were issues that arose over video privacy levels. People didn’t know they could set the privacy while uploading the video so were occasionally publishing public videos they didn’t intend to, or they were too nervous their videos would be public that they avoided the feature all together. We fixed this by calling out privacy controls more prominently in the design and at one point had set all videos to private by default.

We also learned that people don’t have that many friends on Vimeo so there was a push to try to get users to invite new people to the platform. Getting users to send a text or email to their friends is always hit or miss but it was one strategy we used to add more people to the platform and make it more engaging to use this feature. It’s a bit of a buzzkill if its upload and share but you have no one to share with.

The design of this new feature was a challenge because Apple wouldn’t show us how the new iOS looked before it came out. It was a unique design challenge to create something for an OS you don’t know what it’ll look like or function like. Because of this we couldn’t run a traditional design process of interviewing users, doing lo-fi / hi-fi tests with them or gathering feedback. We had to almost shoot in the dark and then see how users responded. We were under NDAs with Apple so this limited the amount of user feedback we could get before released the feature.

I cannot watch videos without having an account and logging in

1. Logged out views for each touchpoint in the app

2. Prompt for login after trying to comment, download or watch later

3. Logged out feed showcasing Staff picks

This involved creating a new onboarding flow, new join/login flows independent of onboarding, logged out states for the menu and feeds, plus a whole new series of alerts for actions that would require login (such as liking or commenting on a video).

After launching this feature, it worked exactly as planned, it increased engagement by double and increased mobile usage. We learned that having log in prompts when the user tried to do specific actions helped give context and increase likelihood that the user will log in or create an account. If they’re already invested in the experience and want to take certain actions, they’re more likely to join or log in. This is also a way we increased mobile usage. The main touchpoint of the app is the desktop platform, but we wanted to keep expanding our reach to potential users, so we targeted them on mobile. By allowing people to browse on their phone we learned that there is interest in the broader community and not just professional video creators who use the website.

Designing this feature was quite involved. It touched every point in the app and involved a restructure of our foundational framework. The design went pretty smoothly, when in development there were a few issues but nothing that couldn’t be resolved. This feature is a huge step forward for the app and was very successful.

I don’t know where I am, or what I should be doing in this app

1. Explain our swipe gestures

2. Showcase our top 3-4 features

3. Keep it short and simple but still inform as much as possible

On first time launch the users now would see 3 steps of how to use gestures, the upload and share feature and how to download videos (3 of our key focus actions in the app). I first started with static screens, and you swipe to progress, but the static screens couldn’t communicate some of the nuances of the experience. I created an animated onboarding set of screens to more accurately tell the user how to use our key features.

After launching the onboarding screens, people who were less familiar with Vimeo (like my family / friends for example) had more context on what to do in this app. There were less hateful iTunes comments and overall, it improved the experience. We did not have a way to test if the onboarding screens resulted in increased use of the main features, but we did see a slight increase in time spent in the app for first time users. I think this addition to the app was successful and much needed for the growth of our brand.

This feature was self-initiated and wasn’t on the larger product roadmap, which meant it wasn’t tracked as well and the process wasn’t as in depth. It still produced a decent output and was received well. The onboarding is animated which was a development challenge, but the developers nailed it. If I had to do it again, I’d track its usefulness more and do more testing with it. I’d also incorporate in app onboarding to give tips and tricks as you use the app.