To redesign a dashboard that would further empower our users to strategize, plan, and reach their particular audience, it would be necessary to define the problem in quantifiable terms. This entailed two central areas of focus: Understanding our users and gaining adequate technical knowledge

Competitive & Comparative Analysis

To fully understand the areas of opportunity for VHX, we also undertook a competitive analysis to further grasp the current video analytics landscape.

The main focus of our competitive research was to add additional insight into how content hosting sites allow their users to interact with their product and how video data can be presented in an easily digestible way.

Key Take-aways:

• Wistia and VHX incorporates the most data into their dashboard
• Brightcove, VHX, Wistia, and Vimeo includes the most extensive data in regards to video analytics
• Out of the selected competitive set, VHX’s current data hierarchy places the strongest emphasis on revenue
• Wistia has the strongest on-boarding process
• Wistia places a strong emphasis on the customer journey

THE CURRENT DASHBOARD (Heuristic Analysis)

At first glance, and owing to the clean, visually pleasing design, all seemed well with the current VHX dashboard. After spending more time on the site however and informing our appraisal with extensive research, certain key issues started to pop up. The dashboard nomenclature for example was inconsistent, with several different titles expressing the same thing or variations of the same thing. Furthermore, some of the visual clarity of the VHX site came at the expense of informational clarity: The Navigation, specifically the 'Activity' drop-down was not intuitive, and valuable data such as video details was hard to find.

We conducted 7 interviews with VHX video sellers, and noticed they all shared the same basic needs to the extent that I thought they had been communicating with each other. They had not, meaning we could satisfy them all with the same design solution. The main takeaways from the interviews were:

• Cannot strategize content based on information provided 
• Good dashboard overview provided, but need more data to plan their marketing and content
• Not enough user viewing data to plan budget distribution 
• Would like clear video performance metrics (top videos, least played, etc) 
• Want access to customer journeys and information
• Want metadata to organize videos and data 

Establishing the M.V.P.

How can VHX help STYCHRA, our steampunk video persona? We identified the following ways:

• Help sellers track key video performance metrics
• Provide comparative and aggregated data on the dashboard
• Aggregate video stats clearly on the content page
• Organize and provide additional subscriber information

According to these insights, our Minimal Viable Product (MVP) would have to optimize the current dashboard in a way that the user can clearly compare and analyze video and subscriber data/content. The data that users see on the dashboard should be exportable.

MoSCoW Method

We used the MSCW Method (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won’t Have), to narrow down the potential features for the project to ensure that we were creating a product for VHX to implement. The magenta container, particularly the lower left quadrant, identifies the most viable features and our design area of focus. The remaining features were still considered important but needed additional research and planning to execute.

This stage of our design process proved relatively easy, between the specificity of the user needs and the fact that adjusting an existing design is generally easier than ideating an entirely new one. We white-boarded extensively to generate design ideas.

User testing Round 1 Take-aways:

• Our Redesign was too busy and visually overwhelming
• The information Architecture, which we had not yet addressed, remained a source of confusion
• The website terminology was still inconsistent and hard to understand

User testing Round 2 Take-aways:

• Many elements/features clarified.
• The new dashboard went too far in the opposite direction. Users deemed it not informative enough.
• Most key issues had been resolved, but fine-tuning usability and clarity remained.

Top-Level Dashboard

Where users could only view one metric at a time, they now have a birds-eye-view of six key metrics as identified through user interviews. We also added an export button as well as a side-bar with all the performance data that was previously under the date-selection.

In short, we kept all the previous data, added the most important categories, and simplified the interface by optimizing space and improving the Information Architecture of the site. Finally, we made sure to keep everything above the fold, so all data is accessible at first glance.

Compare Past Performance

Click on any graph on the main dashboard to get a deeper dive. The Export feature, Overview Side-Bar, and improved IA are all still in place. Click on the Compare Button to see how one date-range matches up against another. The magenta line on the graph shows you the overall median performance.

Lastly, the graph itself has been condensed to allow for an Insight Section below containing more in depth analysis and information on each data category.

View all Content Performance under one page

Rather than jumping between dashboards, we have placed all content data on the same page, renamed 'Video & Content' for increased clarity. Users can now view their overall viewing rate, views by location, top performing and bottom performing videos all at a glance. Comparative graphs are again available to improve content decision making. Lastly, as always, we have added the Export Feature at the top of the page in accordance with the wishes of our SVOD users.

Manage all Viewers on one page

Previously, Viewers were separated into several confusing categories: Subscribers, 'Followers', Customers, Viewers. We have improved this terminology by renaming 'Followers', which VHX defined simply as people signed up to the channel mailing list, as 'Mailing List'. Furthermore, users can now toggle between the different type of viewers using the tabs above the lists.

We also replaced infinite scrolling with pagination at the behest of our users, and enabled the creation of custom groups, which the user can make based on any of the available criteria: Location, date joined, viewership. This should facilitate more pointed communication with channel viewers. Finally, we revamped the details drawer....

The Devil is in the Details...

Video Details
One of the biggest problems with the previous dashboard was how hard the individual video details were to find. Now, the 'details drawer' is clearly named. The tabs have also been reorganized to give priority to video stats first, metadata/tags second, and artwork third. The graphs in 'stats' now enable the user to clearly identify viewing patterns and plan accordingly.

Customer Details
SVOD users asked for a way to track viewer journeys and strategize based on the behavior of their audience. In the 'Customer drawer', accessible from the same relative location as the video details, you can now find customer data such as titles-watched, amount of plays, keywords searched, and others.

While our re-design essentially focused on maximizing the usefulness and intuitiveness of an existing dashboard, interesting ideas and new directions emerged in conversation that did not fit in our existing scope. These include:

• Explore ways to have the exportable data on dashboard be interactive graphs that sellers can use in reports that they pull
• Work with dev and analytics team to see what other information can be pulled to provide more robust journeys throughout the dashboard pages
• Would like to continue to explore the possibility of a mobile dashboard   to provide on the go snapshot