Enhancing Vimeo Events with layouts

A case study from a Vimeo designer on live streaming more flexibly.

Vimeo Events is a live streaming platform that enables broadcasters to produce and promote virtual events (see Figure 1). From custom registration to post-engagement analytics, Vimeo Events enables any business to build an audience, prepare for an event in advance, and go live easily with a browser-based, studio-quality production tool.

Figure 1. Vimeo Events is a browser-based way to host a professionally produced event.

This article is a deep dive into the process behind adding a new feature to our product — the ability for users to lay out the content of their scene with more flexibility and customization. We’ll define the following:

• What Vimeo Events is
• An opportunity we saw to enhance the product
• The research and ideation we did to explore that opportunity
• How users felt about our ideas
• Where the feature finally landed

Let’s begin!

Exploring Vimeo Events

Vimeo Events includes functionality for pre-production, live streaming, and engagement tools.

Pre-production

Broadcasters can build each scene ahead of time, including pre-recorded videos, guest speakers, graphics, and interactive moments (see Figure 2). This ensures that their event runs smoothly.

Figure 2. An example of building an event before the event goes live. A user in Vimeo Events adds multiple scenes to a Wealth Wisdom webinar.

Live streaming

Broadcasters can go live to an audience with real-time interaction, high-quality streaming, and the ability to send any piece of content to the stream at any time (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. An example of a Vimeo Events user going live with a Wealth Wisdom webinar and chatting with that audience.

Engagement tools

When live, a broadcaster can interact with their audience using moderated chat, polls, and Q&A (see Figure 4). These tools can be set up before an event or added on the fly.