The Wistia Tune-Up

Jan 14 2013

As our 2012 wrap-up indicates, we added a lot of new things to Wistia over the past year. With all this new functionality in place, it felt like the right time for a good, old-fashioned tune-up, not only to make sure everything works well together, but also to make room for new functionality.

As we made these product additions, we took the liberty of experimenting with the design of each one, rather than enforcing strict consistency. This approach allows us to make progress quickly, figuring out what works and what doesn't, but over time it can lead to quirkiness and complexity within the product. That's no good!

We made hundreds of small changes, but here are some of the most important ones:

  • We hate confusing product updates, so we didn't totally move or rename anything. It all just looks and works better.
  • Okay, we renamed one thing: "Stats" is now "Statistics." We hope you're okay with that.
  • Videos appear as high-definition, 960-pixel-wide encodes by default on a cleaned-up Media page that's ready to share directly with your audience.
  • But don't worry, the videos on the Media page resize responsively if you're on a smaller screen.
  • Better legibility with a new font (switching from a number of complementary typefaces to one that's beautiful and friendly), more contrast, larger text, and fewer, brighter colors.
  • We've added the number of video plays on the Projects page. It's also a link to that project's stats, just like for each video inside a project! We really like the extra bit of context this gives when browsing one’s projects.
  • You can now delete projects directly from the Projects page.
  • We moved the title and description below the video. The video is the center of attention, and the title is a supporting element. This new layout reflects that. On the Project page, we moved the description from the side of the page to the top, right under the title. This feels more natural and allows you to give context.
  • Video controls are bound to the entire page. Tap the space bar to play or pause the video. There’s a whole slew of other hot keys too, but more on that later!

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Brendan (20 Posts)

Co-founder, CTO, friendly guy.


  • http://TheOperationsGuy.com/ Apolinaras Sinkevicius

    Another creative video :-)

  • http://brendanschwartz.com/ Brendan Schwartz

    The number of heated debates and tiny UI tweaks (many of which never saw the light of day) involved in this change would cause most people to explode from frustration. But working with @MaxSchnur, @JRingenberg, and everyone else here made the whole process really fun and energizing! It’s all about finding the right solution, even if that means spending an entire week revising some tiny detail 20 times over. It feels so good when it’s right!

  • gordonkennedy

    Interstate – classy choice. Love the new look. Well done, guys.

  • Lucas Garvin

    Good work guys! I like the new flow.

  • http://brendanschwartz.com/ Brendan Schwartz

    Max Schnur dubbed this project “Wide Lanes” a few weeks into its development. And by some strange coincidence we ended up using Interstate. Or maybe it’s no coincidence at all :)

    Either way, good eye and glad you like the choice!

  • http://brendanschwartz.com/ Brendan Schwartz

    Thanks Lucas!

  • Bill Ebert

    YOU GUYS ROCK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Chris Farrell

    I am going to call my first born Wistia. Oh heck, I’ll call em all Wistia,,,,

  • James Bryant

    Hi Guys. Great Work! Any chance you can create “Project Folders” for collections of “projects”? We have a lot of “projects”, and it would make them a bit easier to navigate.

  • Alex P

    yet another inspired video. How did you guys come up with the theme?? no don’t tell me, it just came to you at the water cooler? Go on, spill the beans!!

  • http://brendanschwartz.com/ Brendan Schwartz

    Hi James, that’s a very good question and a concept we’ve debated over the years. When I think about project folders, I get all tangled up with things like: do we allow setting permissions for entire groups of projects, how do we resolve those permissions with the permissions of the individual projects, do we only have one level of project folders, or multiple? In my mind if we provide more tools to help stay organized, rather than impose another strict level of organization, we get the best of both worlds: easy to filter and find projects, while not getting in the way for light usage of the product. My preference would be to lean on functionality like search (which we have secret plans to improve, shh) to help solve these problems. Hope that helps give you an idea of our thinking on this stuff. Keep the feedback coming!

  • http://brendanschwartz.com/ Brendan Schwartz

    I’m not exactly sure where the tune-up idea came from (Lavigne, Gen, Dan?), but I’d been wearing that Dickies jumpsuit around the office for a while. My parents gave it to me for Christmas — you know, in case I need to change some oil. Unfortunately it’s covered in grease now, so not sure it’s fit for office wear.

  • Andrew

    Nice video clip. Thanks

  • http://www.litmus.com Justine, Litmus

    Looking good, guys!

  • http://brendanschwartz.com/ Brendan Schwartz

    Thanks Justine! Appreciate the tweet as well :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/milasking Milas King

    Your over thinking it @brendanschwartz:disqus . If I have more than one website, it would be nice to organize my videos within the websites(project) folder. ie newsletter videos, sales videos, etc. I think that functionality would be very useful.

  • http://brendanschwartz.com/ Brendan Schwartz

    I am a master of over thinking things :)
    We do currently have one level of organization in Projects themselves that we call Sections. They’re pretty useful for doing what you described, I think. So long as you don’t have many hundreds of videos in one project, it’s a good way to go.

  • http://twitter.com/JonathanDrake Jonathan Drake

    i see wistia more and more around the web. congrats! the tiny details do matter and you guys are also starting to get the devs build more and more