Designing a complete video upload functionality for event organisers.

Conferize is a platform where you can organise and manage your events from beginning to end. The platform offers multiple tools so you can plan everything before, during but also after the event. My mission as a Product Designer was to improve the platform by designing new functionalities impacting the event organiser but also the attendees.

Defining the project

Due to Covid-19 the company made a strategic switch from in-person events to online events. Very quickly it appeared that event organisers wanted to stream live events but also to upload pre-recorded events and make these videos available to attendees on a private sessions page.

On paper uploading a video seems ridiculously simple, but in reality it’s not and some Design work is needed in order to answer some questions.

• Who can upload and/or delete videos? Only the admin or all team members?
• Where do we store the videos? In the existing Assets section or do we create something new?
• What type of video files can we use? MP4, MOV, YouTube links? 
• How does the organiser add a video to the event page? 
• What happens if the upload of the video fails?
• Etc, etc, ...

Of course this is a very small list of the questions I had to answer for this project but this is how it started. So I wrote a complete document explaining the concept and my vision in order to create this new feature. The following step was to organise a meeting with the Frontend and Backend developers in order to review my suggestions and define the limits. The deadline for this project was 6 weeks. So defining what is possible and what isn't is crucial.

UX and wireframes

It doesn’t make any sense to jump on the boat and raise the sail if you don’t know where you’re going and if you don’t have a plan. The same principle applies to Product Design and I always start by shaping a basic plan on my sketchbook in order to define where to go.

By sketching some basic mockups it is very fast and easy to spot what works and what doesn’t without getting lost in the details.

Once the overall plan is solid enough it’s time to work on the UX and define the journey of the user with very basic wireframes. Because I already built a Design System for the company with a full library of components (you can read more about this here), making the first version of the wireframes was blazing fast.

Final mockups

As soon as the wireframes and the UX have been approved by the entire team, it's time to tackle the UI. Consistency is the golden rule that I apply to all my Product Design projects, and as I mentioned earlier I built a Design System with predefined styles and a full library of components, so no need to reinvent the wheel.

Additionally, the Conferize platform is not made for mobile usage, only desktop mocks are required and the UI components are all fully responsive so that makes it even easier.

The importance of Prototypes

Delivering final mockups to developers is one thing but being able to explain the entire flow and all the interactions is something else. To avoid any misunderstanding and make the life of the developer easier I always ship my mockups with a few prototypes.

Do you want to talk about Product Design, 3D animatiom or any other exciting projects? Just drop me a line at this email address: contact.ferrere@gmail.com

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