Company

Viber

Year

2020 - 2021

My role

Lead Designer
Prototype

Platform

Mobile app
Desktop app

Overview

The redesign of Viber's video and audio call feature, along with the new features we added, resolved longstanding issues.
The aim was to update the visual design and user experience and bring Viber up to par , or even surpass, what our competitors are offering.

About Viber

Viber is a calling and messaging app that connects people–no matter who they are, or where they’re from.
Each month, hundreds of millions of people connect, for free, with their loved ones via messaging, high-quality voice and video calls, and more.
All one-on-one Viber calls and personal chats, and all group chats are protected by built-in end-to-end encryption,
so you can be sure that your conversations are always secure.

Problems

Throughout research, user interviews, and inner company discussions, I found out that our video & audio calls had several issues that impacted retention and adoption.

Dated

Users and employees unanimously agreed that Viber’s video & audio calls looked visually dated and out of touch with modern design.

Lacked features

After conducting research, we found that our calls were lacking important and valuable features that are necessary to meet the needs of our users.

Market alignment

In order to remain competitive, we identified the need to align our video and audio call interfaces with those of our direct competitors.

Opportunity

Aligning the moon Viber with its competitors by improving its video and audio call features, user interface, and overall experience.

My perspective

My primary focus was to enhance the user experience for our video and audio calls by simplifying and streamlining the process from start to finish. Additionally, I aimed to improve the visual design of the user interface to make it more visually appealing and consistent with the overall Viber experience.
Ultimately, my goal was to align our video and audio calls with industry standards, ensuring that the feature is intuitive and easy to use for all users, both existing and new.

What was added?

The following features had the most impact per data usage and customer interviews.
Also, we noticed that users who used those specific features a lot increased their overall DAU.

Grid view

The 'Grid view' feature allows
users to view up to 8 participants simultaneously, providing the flexibility to switch between the 'Speaker view' and the 'Grid view' as desired. This new feature aligns us with our competitors and improves the overall user experience of our video calls.
It also led to a 15% increase in usage of our video calls.

Virtual Background

To address the lack of privacy in online meetings and classes due to the shift towards remote work and study brought on by
Covid-19, we added a virtual background feature that allows users to replace or blur their real background during calls.

Re-dialing

We added the ability to redial participants who either didn't answer the initial call or were disconnected during the call.
This feature allows users to continue their video/audio calls smoothly without having to disconnect and start the call again to add missing participants.

The final design

Grid View - Desktop App

This is a group video call on Viber, featuring the new 'Grid View' option which allows users to view up to 8 participants on the screen at the same time.

User is Muted

The current user ('You") is muted

Mute Indication

The "mute indication" feature displays a tooltip when the current user is speaking while on mute. The user can click the button to unmute permanently or hold the space bar to unmute temporarily.

Mute Indication - Minimized Window

The mute indication as it will be displayed while the Viber desktop app is minimized.

Transferring Call to Phone

This new feature enables the user to seamlessly transfer an active call from their desktop to their phone or vice versa, without having to hang up and redial.

Screen Sharing Modal

The new 'Share Screen' feature has been improved to allow users to preview the screen they wish to share before starting the sharing process. Additionally, users can now share specific applications rather than their entire screen, providing a smoother and more private experience.

Grid View - Mobile App

This is a group video call on Viber, featuring the new 'Grid View' option which allows users to view up to 8 participants on the screen at the same time.

4 Participants

A Viber group video call with 4 participants, one of whom has turned off their camera.

Bottom Drawer Open

This new feature in Viber's call interface, called the "Bottom Drawer," enables users to send a message to a specific participant, redial a participant, and view the call status of all participants during a group call.

Options Menu Open

This new feature in Viber's call interface, called the "Options Menu," gives users additional options during a call, such as the Virtual Background and Call Recording.

Next Steps

After we launched we had several areas to tackle:
1. An immediate round of feedback and user interviews with our beta users.
2. Continuing interviewing users to figure out what's still missing.
3. Making sure that the video streaming quality isn't poorly impacted due to increased usage
(Something that our engineers warned us about)
4. Starting to work on a virtual lobby where users can check their cameras and microphones
before joining a call.