MIKE OICHERMAN
PRODUCT DESIGN · RESEARCH · AI-ASSISTED PROTOTYPING & BUILD
MULTI-STREAMING
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Live Stream content to multiple platforms at once seamlessly.
Role Product Design Lead
Timeline Q2 2024 - Q4 2024
Company StreamElements
The Problem
Due to policy shifts and the emergence of new services in the live streaming ecosystem, creators currently lack a tangible solution for their multi-streaming needs. Creators are using third-party tools to achieve their multi-streaming goals. This results in lower adoption of the StreamElements product suite and a loss of potential revenue.
Goals
Our primary goal was to enable multi-streaming via the SE.Live OBS plugin. We aimed to
OBJECTIVE 1 Reach 5,000 daily multi-stream starts within the first 3 months.
OBJECTIVE 2 Achieve 100,000 SE.Live downloads within the first 3 months.
OBJECTIVE 2 Reach 20,000 daily multi-stream starts within 6 months.
Research & Findings
GoalsIdentify creators' primary needs when approaching multi-streaming, explore usability improvements, and highlight possible future feature development.
Process
Industry Pioneer Interviews Interviewed multi-streaming pioneers, researched usage patterns, and identified user needs.
5-7 Competitive User Interviews Interviewed users of competitor tools to understand and analyze their competitive edge, which features and tools creators are using, what they like, and what could be improved.
Competitive Analysis Researched and mapped the strengths and weaknesses of similar tools and services currently used by creators.
Creator Success Requests: Reviewed relevant requests from creators pertaining to multi-streaming.
Key Findings
An overwhelming majority of research participants were generally excited to start multi-streaming if an appropriate solution that met their needs could be found.Current tools provided by competitors are often unreliable and functionally limiting, presenting clear opportunities for improvement.Creators expressed a desire not only to stream but also to record their content in different formats to repurpose it for various mediums. This insight helped us define an additional use case.
Ideation
For the ideation process, I facilitated a one-day in-squad design sprint with the development team, creator success agents, and live creator industry pioneers. Here are some details on the process we took:
Competitive Analysis. Each team member presented a few competitive tools or features they liked. Following this, each member highlighted the positives and negatives of these solutions, and the group collectively ranked and picked the top 3 ideas.
Interview Presentations. From the preliminary research I conducted, I chose to present 3 recorded interviews. Afterward, each participant wrote down their conclusions, mapping user needs, pain points, or general ideas.
Mix & Match. As a collective group, we began attaching the conclusions the team had written down in the previous step to the 3 solutions we had chosen. Our aim was to identify which solutions addressed the majority of user needs and uncover possible feature gaps.
Selection. By identifying a base for our solution and matching as many user needs as possible, we defined the features of our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) while also creating a feature plan for future iterations.
Prototype
PlanningI created a high-fidelity prototype to showcase the flow of mirroring a stream to another platform. We aimed to verify the most common use case when multi-streaming to multiple platforms and identify a viable MVP – the least we could do while delivering the most impact.
Prototype Creation
Interactions & Flow. The prototype focused on the initial setup before going live, with a detailed breakdown of creating a mirror setup, duplicating, creating and defining new sources and scenes, and creating and managing a vertical layout.
Feedback & Iterations. Our assumption of a single-source mirror MVP did not meet our expectations.
Testing & Validation
Method10x online screen-share interviews were conducted. Participants interacted with the prototype while we observed their behavior, identified feature gaps, and gathered feedback.
Key Findings & Iterations
Sponsorship Offers. Users engaged with SE.Live were 5 times more likely to accept a sponsorship offer from StreamElements, which is the company's main revenue driver.
Unique Scene Collections & Recording. Creators desired a unique scene collection for each platform and preferred to record live content rather than simply mirror the live stream.
Performance is Key. Performance was paramount. Users were willing to tolerate the constraints of the OBS GUI (due to familiarity with the product) as long as their live multi-stream maintained stability and quality.
Design
MethodThe final design introduced the ability for creators to live stream an unlimited number of canvases to an unlimited number of outputs (platforms). It adhered to the GUI constraints of OBS, focusing on ease-of-use, familiar UX patterns, and control for power users.
Principles
Ease-of-Use. Focus on intuitive control of a live stream, reducing the time and clicks required for action.
Familiarity within Constraints. Follow OBS UX patterns that users are familiar with, reducing cognitive dissonance when performing similar actions.
Flexibility & Control. Maintain a clear, top-level UX for the common creator while enabling power user creativity through deeper levels of the product.
Live Product View Product
Thoughts and Metrics
Outcome SE.Live multi-streaming surpassed 300,000 downloads, reaching 22,000 daily active users, 130,000 monthly active users, and 40,000 live streams daily across 5+ platforms (200% of the original goal).
What We Did Right We correctly identified an emerging trend in the ecosystem, followed by rapid product planning and execution after validating our initial thesis and demonstrating organic growth.
What We Did Wrong To quickly execute and deliver, we chose to follow native OBS GUI UX patterns. This inadvertently created a somewhat fragmented experience, jumping between Qt and React components.