User experience is everythingThe story of appear.in
Who am I?
Dag-Inge AasTechnical Leader @ appear.in
Who are we?
appear.in/room-name
Agenda
It all started with the interns
3 students, 2 weeks
PICTURE OF INITIAL FEEDBACK
Launch early!
“The world’s biggest WebRTC-based video-conferencing service”
The average user couldn’t care less
Skype worksFacetime worksHangouts works
Messenger works
“We support DTLS-SRTP end-to-end encryption with client-side encryption keys”
...it’s like super-secure!
What could we build that was better?
No login, no installs, free for up to 8 people
Just share the link
The user doesn’t care about technology
Your technology choice will not get you users
WebRTC was not going to make us big
Play our strengths and innovate
People loved us, but they weren’t coming back
Find ways to make our product more sticky
Got ideas and tried them out on real users
Talk to your users!
PICTURE SLIDES
PICTURE SLIDES
We innovated way too much
We did away with “login” and “sign up”
“Access profile” is the new login
“Room keys” to let people in
PICTURE OF EMAIL WITH ROOM KEY
Keep innovations to a minimum
Users need to feel familiar
Too many new things is scary, unfamiliar, and will lead to users leaving
We wanted to make a service for everyone
People have different expectations
VS.
Get a target market
Viral spread
Showed us a new usage pattern
Video is important, audio is muted
Text > Audio
So we went out and talked to them
Choosing a target does not meanyour product will only fit those people
A target helps you prioritize
What has WebRTC got to do with any of this?
WebRTC is a game-changer
WebRTC is not about a phone in the browser
WebRTC is not about audio or video?
Creating new and innovateuser experiences
Much, much easier than ever before
WebRTC is what made appear.in possible
But no matter what remember
User experience is everything
Questions?