Paving the way for pizza.

Thoughts on Upclose v5 (Bouncy Bolognese)

When I started in Upclose, about 2 months ago, I found an amazing team who fought for survival in an industry that had been invaded by two major live video products with way more resources. So first things first, I set off with the idea of creating a roadmap strategy that would put our product’s features in front of the competition’s and thus help us grow in awareness and recognition.

So I sat with the team and listed the user and business needs and mapped out a set of functional groups, like packets composed from a series of simple and complex features, and started prioritizing. Everything was part of a route towards a product that was more robust, carefree and fun experience for our users.

From a mix of user requests, behavior patterns and brand problems, we came up with what we would include in our first packet, our first step towards a mid-term goal:

• Brand and product redesign
• Content categorization
• Ubiquitous video player

Let’s dig deeper into each one.

Brand and Product Redesign

I had the luck of arriving at Upclose just a week after our new Copy and Visual leads came on board. During their first week, they both found several of the brand’s problems and had a list of things we should work on. So hand-in-hand, we came up with a list of weaknesses to improve and after 3 weeks of hard work, we had a new communication tone and personality, new brand identity and new app flows, wires and functionalities we would introduce into our apps, web and marketing elements.

We adopted a much fresher attitude, which helped us tune into much fresher times. Our new corporate colors, our new tone and language and a more standardized experience will pave the way for the future and set our way of talking, thinking and acting.

Content Categorization

Live video is generally only sorted into two blocks: Live/Not Live and Hashtags. When researching competition, we found that the most repeated problem amongst users was discoverability and mess. So we proposed using topics as a new form of categorization on Upclose. We would not only allow users to add a topic to their broadcasts and created topic pages, which show all the content tagged with each one of our topics, we also allow users to follow a topic. Following a topic will help the system provide more relevant content to each individual user, creating a more personal relationship between user and the product.

We also believe that categorization helps us detect user behavior and drive our efforts towards outstanding topics, experiment with more complex categories or get rid of the most quiet ones. Ultimately, it let’s us combine the existing social graph with a new interest graph.

Ubiquitous video player

As a brand, we really wanted to help our users get out there, expand their live video realm, make their content really theirs. We already had an embed feature nearly since launching early this year but we wanted more, we wanted smarter. That’s how we designed and developed a completely responsive video player which users can take to their most personal and customized online places without worrying about how it will work. Given the size of the space, our player adapts seamlessly.

Our next really big step was to take live content to platforms where our users had their other audiences, where people who don’t even know about Upclose could see them live. After careful consideration, we though about integrating our Tumblr embed first. The result is stunning. With just one click, the live video player is posted as a native Tumblr element, adapting to context. So proud to be able to bring this first-timer to the live streaming industry.

Closing up. So would I have done differently? Many things, for sure. But I’m so happy about the magnitude of this change that I can only look forward, listen to feedback, plan some more and keep on working on such an amazing product.

Process-wise, I do think our user-centric side is too remote and would love to start bring people in for in-person sessions, which we haven’t been able to do as often as I would have liked.

As I said before, the features presented on Upclose v5.0 (Bouncy Bolognese) are a means to pave the way toward future releases, now named after our teams beloved pizzas (;

But, in an industry which is at its highest point ever, who knows what will come next?

Thanks for reading.
❤ and spread the love.
Join Rafa Torres on upclose.me/rafatorres.