The Wistia Tune-Up

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!