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Project Name
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Sync
12 min read
Sync is a multi-platform video conferencing solution. Founded in 2010, Sync has 500 million users, with majority joining in the past year. The company relies on a tiered subscription service including enterprise, high-cost, low-cost, and free tier with varying services offered in each tier.
What was the Problem ?
Large enterprise customers, such as government and academic agencies, were frustrated by uninvited attendees joining their video calls. This was happening because currently, there were no attendance authentication tools available for meeting owners. As a result, meeting owners were coming up with laborious and unsustainable work-arounds , and ultimately switching to alternative products.
What was the Proposed Solution?
The proposed solution was an “Authentication Prior to Entering Meeting” feature. This feature confirmed the identity of the users who attempt to enter the call prior to admitting them in. This feature was a big step towards solving customers’ problems with un-invited attendants. This feature was expected to benefit both the customer and Sync :
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It would solve a major customer pain point
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It would eliminate workaround for manual attendant screening
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It would reduce customer distractions and help them focus on their job
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It would helped Sync maintain leadership position in the market
Who Were Target Personas?
The insights from the research were articulated in the form of customer personas. This helped digest the research further and provide a clearer narrative for the problem at hand.
What was the MVP?
The MVP was intended to authenticate the users attempting to enter the call to make sure they were only admitted to the call if they were on the invite list. For the MVP, it was proposed to consider only the “authenticate via work email” feature, using the “code” method. This meant that when invited users attempted to enter the call, they would receive an email which contained a code. They needed to enter the code in the Sync lobby in order to be admitted. Other prototype features such as the authenticator app, and the authentication link were to be rolled out in the future versions. The MVP was also to be only rolled out for PC users initially. The following requirements were identified for the MVP:
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Automatic and fast
The MVP would be rolled out to a large user base and given the time-sensitivity of users’ daily schedules and meetings, a concierge-like MVP is not recommended.
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Functional
The users had expressed a strong desire to start using the feature and were interested to start using the MVP for their daily tasks right away.
What was Built?
A low-fi prototype was created in Balsamique with the following goals in mind:
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Intended users were able to join the calls successfully
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Unintended users were stopped from joining the calls
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The meeting owners would no longer need to manually manage unintended attendants
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The meeting owners would no longer need to implement laborious workarounds
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The meeting owners (customers) will have a higher satisfaction score
The prototype was tested via 1:1 video calls with users. Users were given detailed objectives to complete in steps and their reactions and behavior was recorded for analysis. The users were presented with two features to test : authentication via work email, and authentication via authenticator app.
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Version B of the prototype was developed and A/B testing was conducted with a different set of users. Test users had a more positive response to the B prototype as evidenced by reduced confusion and easier grasp of the authentication methods presented in the prototype.
What was the Impact?
The authentication feature was expected to bring significant operational efficiency to Sync’s customers, particularly the enterprise contracts. The users no longer needed to manually manage call attendants and could therefore abandon the laborious and unsustainable processes they have developed for doing so. This in turn was expected to yield higher user engagement and satisfaction which were critical to Sync’s success as a market leading solution. In the long run, the authentication feature was expected to also benefit Sync’s bottom line by preventing users from switching to competitors, which would stabilize and ultimately increase Sync’s revenue.