user experience is everything

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?