Channel

Immediate playback after posting a video

Channel was a mobile app for editing and sharing video stories. I proposed and implemented a change to its posting flow so people could see their own video in the feed while the server prepared it for streaming.

The wait looked like a missing post

Videos were processed on the device, uploaded, and then encoded on the server before appearing in the feed. While dogfooding an internal alpha, coworkers were confused when a video they had just posted did not appear. The encoding step was invisible to them.

We considered a message explaining that the video would appear shortly. Instead, I used the copy already on the device to make playback part of the posting flow.

Using the local copy while the server caught up

I kept a cached copy of the video and inserted it at the top of the poster's feed. Once the encoded version arrived from the server, it replaced the local copy.

In internal dogfooding before shipping, my coworkers and I observed the new flow go directly from posting to playback at the top of the feed. The server still needed time to encode the video, but the person posting it could watch their local copy immediately.

Lead Designer: Edwin de Jongh · Product Manager: Marwan Roushdy