Backstage

Since the early offerings of 24i's video streaming solutions, Backstage has served as the middleman between front-end apps and back-end systems. With its management capabilities, customers can manage and maintain their streaming applications themselves, in detail.

Expanding horizons

With front-end apps of Appstage constantly evolving, Backstage had to grow in parallel. Backstage originated from a heavily technical back-end management tool, and grew towards a feature-rich app management system. Managing databases, planning content release schedules or even setting up the complete styling for the front-end apps, Backstage ended up covering it all. A system like this has many different types of users; back-end specialists have very different goals compared to content managers, and contrasting competencies as well. Yet all users need to be able to easily find their way around Appstage.

Usability at no cost

For our product design team this variety of user profiles brought along many interesting challenges. As product design lead I had to make sure each feature was designed in a highly usable way, while still bringing users full technical functionality. To tackle this difficulty, we had various design sessions whenever design challenges came up. Working with clear user personas and constantly involving stakeholders helped us find ways to create smart interfaces. These interfaces are easy to use, in which simple tasks can easily be done. But at the same time, power-users have all the functionalities they need and are offered in-depth customisation. This way we could serve the needs of each user type. Gathering both qualitative and quantitive data gave us the needed insights for strong decision making. This wasn't always easy, with many features and flows being highly technical by nature. But with enough iteration, prototyping and feedback we came to satisfying results and a consistent user experience.

Enabling customers

To help customers with building expertise on our Backstage solution, we defined several methods to onboard customers. First off, we gave new customers a personalised tour through the system that covers their main goals and how to achieve them. Next to that, we defined the most important learning points for customers, and put them into a step-wise interactive learning guide within the interface. This way customers could help themselves getting to know the product, without needing excessive time from our teams. This mix of personal care and more flexible learning methods, gave assured our customers they went with the right streaming solution.

Years of efforts building out Backstage into a very capable and usable app management solution has not been without recognition. The product has been driving high profile companies to successfully maintaining their video content. Vice, Newsmax and many more have utilised Backstage with high satisfaction. Backstage is considered as a market leading product management solution within the field, and constant iteration by our product design team has kept it in that position.