Epiphan Cloud
Remotely control and monitor hardware devices from Epiphan Video
Epiphan Cloud gives Epiphan's hardware users the controls for fully remote operations of their devices so it's easy to create, configure and stream video content remotely.
Company and Date
Epiphan Video | May-Sept 2020
My Role
Product Design | UX Research | Design Lead | Marketing Images
How might we allow Epiphan customers to control their devices remotely to create and manage live event video productions?
Problem and context
It is common for Epiphan Video's clients to have more than one device in their workflow (e.g. some universities have up to 50 Epiphan devices working simultaneously in different rooms). Unless all devices are connected and configured to the same network, IT managers had to physically locate and access the hardware to do any setup configuration.
There was no centralized area to configure, control and monitor all of them remotely. This generated frustration due to managers relying on physical presence, sets of hacks, or third-party solutions.
Business goals:
Create a single online area where users can easily monitor and configure their physical Epiphan devices.
Improve brand equity by focusing on ease of use, reliability, and user satisfaction. Make users look professional while using the product.
Users must see the value in paying for the Pro Version.
Results:
New product launched: Epiphan Cloud. Epiphan Cloud allows users to easily monitor, configure, schedule and remotely access all their Epiphan devices.
Universities and institutions with plenty of devices cannot see themselves without Epiphan Cloud. The new “batch” feature is crucial for their efficiency.
Users don't have to rely on hacks or physical presence to access remote devices.
A new way of generating revenue and brand recognition for Epiphan.
The Approach
1.
Discovery and documentation
People were tired of fidgeting with finicky solutions and needed a place to see and control all their devices. The need arose after evaluating feedback from users and satisfaction forms.
The main users and goals

Audio/video technicians and managers from universities and live events companies.
Goal: Manage a fleet of devices, ensure everything is running smoothly, and record and stream the event to the selected location (Youtube, Facebook, Kaltura...).

Buyers (Directors of Information Technology):
Goal: Purchase the best audio/video solution based on a list of requirements made by the video producers, IT team, and AV technicians.
“I want to elevate our school's reputation as a top-tier educational institution with modern facilities and trend-setting teaching tools to ensure students get a quality education and the school's perception as an education technology leader/innovator.”

We had provisional user journeys collaboratively done in Miro so we could understand the buying process and the first Epiphan device set-up experience. Helpful in some stages of the Epiphan Cloud development.

Features and constraints: dashboard design, optimized for desktop and tablet viewports, and a quick launch.
The idea of having a dashboard was already established, so the ideation was more focused on the features and constraints. Constraints were defined, discussed, and we ended up with requirements in spreadsheets.
The company also wanted to release this quickly, which meant we needed to use the design system and elements from our current digital products — some were a bit outdated.
Lastly, we had no mobile version, as our users will not use this app on mobile viewports. However, we had to provide a good experience for tablet sizes.
2.
Development and features
System architecture: overview and drill down
The assumption was that users would start with an overview of all the paired Epiphan devices and then drill down to the devices they were more interested in.
Tools for filtering and searching were also important.

Sitemap done in Miro, before we changed the name from AV Studio to Epiphan Cloud.

Users can access each device individually to get specific stats and do operations.

Progressive disclosure and customizable status fields
Most of the professionals that use our products are highly skilled and want to check all possible details and gear statuses. To not overwhelm them, we display the most necessary info on the surface and leave the rest to secondary pages.
It's also possible to customize what kind of data users will like to see on the dashboard view.

Most of the interface work was figuring out the different flows and relationships between operations.

Even hovers and active states demanded some extra considerations.

Whimsical elements were also incorporated for delight.

Challenges with connecting cloud interfaces with hardware interfaces
Any new feature and status additions had to factor in the hardware devices from Epiphan, which also had their own interfaces.

Any operation in Cloud meant a change in the Pearl-2 touchscreen interface and Pearl-2 admin interface.

Alert System:
People should focus on the event production and not on the devices
Managing audio/video systems is stressful work due to the number of different devices and software people have to work with (e.g. microphones, video cameras, sound boards, automation systems, encoders…). This brings a lot of possible points of failure. With an alert system, people can work on other tasks of their workflow, knowing that they will be warned if something goes wrong with Epiphan devices, reducing anxiety and increasing confidence in the tool.
Batch operations, filters and groups reduce set-up time considerably
Thinking about users that have 3+ devices in their lineup and need to do the same operation across all, we implemented the batch operations feature. Now with only a couple of clicks, people can update firmware, change settings, and start/stop recordings across all selected devices, reducing set-up time considerably.
Universities with 40+ Epiphan devices are pleased to be able to catalogue, search and find what they need
Each classroom or department can be a group and managers can focus on only what they need to see. This becomes an even more powerful tool when you do a batch operation in the whole group. Users now need 5 minutes to do operations that took half or full days before.
3.
Quality assurance process: more than meets the eye
The QA team did a thorough process and it was interesting to see how a visually simple web interface could have such technical complexity.
Because we were dealing with audio and video signals, there were plenty of "invisible" elements we had to take into account. For instance, we had to check if the video latency was good enough or if users could listen to the audio well enough, plus how this is shown on the interface.

Examples of some interaction flows the QA team helped us review.
Before release: prepare current users for the changes
Epiphan Cloud is an evolution of another, simpler, cloud interface called AV Studio. We not only had to announce Cloud to our current users, but we had to make sure they had the right migration experience and didn't lose any important files along the way.

We utilized the value/effort matrix as a starting point to collaborate on how we would promote Epiphan Cloud.

Epiphan Cloud's free plan didn't come with all features. The best way to convince users to switch to the paid plan was to show the premium features contextually, right when they needed them.

4.
The first version was launched three months after I joined. After that, we kept iterating in small updates.

Results
Lots of praise from users, IT managers and video managers for large companies and universities. 
Epiphan Cloud was launched at the right time: during the lockdowns caused by the COVID pandemic. Epiphan users easily transitioned to a remote setup.
The Batch actions proved to be an essential feature — sometimes the only feature that made users subscribe to the service.
Case study:
Video production company ramps up operations with cloud-enabled efficiency

Jeremy Prudhomme, Founder of JEEMAN Productions.
Next steps
There is still a lot to be done to ease users’ pains and frustrations. Perhaps the most important addition will be:

Events-based approach matching users' mental models:
Professionals that deal with live production have different setups that are repeated for different events. Currently, Cloud's setup is device focused: users have to know what devices will be used for the event and deal with each individually. Grouping helps, but that's not enough.
Our assumption of a better alternative would be having an events-based flow. In this future state, devices can be grouped, configured and scheduled in advance based on the specific type of event (e.g. live concerts, townhalls, round tables). Meaning that a producer can set up event templates by mixing different devices and reusing them over and over.
I created a dashboard concept on Dribbble that shows a little of how this could look like.
“Epiphan Cloud puts our eyes and ears on-site. It allows us to control the outcome of the event.” Jim Fiore, President at Corporate Events Online.
View case study
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Epiphan Cloud website 

Credits:
Admin: Misha Jiline, Mike Sandler.
Product Management: Yusupha Touray, George Birchall.
UX Design: Marcos Duda.
Engineering: Vadim Kalinskiy, Vladimir Rodkin, Roman Davydov, Adam Frame.
Marketing, branding: George Birchall, Jay Bonilla, Dan Wallace, Marta Chernova, Victor Doubrovine.
Customer Success: George Herbert, Mathieu Renaud, Zack Bell, Adam Palmer, Ryan Haynes.
QA: Issam Kndakji, Loulia Massarani.
+ The whole team at Epiphan Video
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