Snapshot: Strucc (currently Everbloom)

Here is a snapshot of the work that I’ve done in the last couple of months for Strucc (currently Everbloom). As a part of the team, I helped Strucc to transition from version 1.1.0, which supported capturing and browsing trick shots only, to version 2.1.1 which supports video editing with a lot of customization options and monetization. My role in a distributed team of initially two and four people later was focused on developing the UI layer of the product and integrating it with the underlying project, services, and rendering engine.

What you can see is the end product though. It doesn’t show up what path did we travel to get to this point - it was definitely not a straight road. It consisted of hundreds or thousands of micro-iterations. We performed a lot of experiments in the form of A/B tests, some features have been created from scratch, and some have been fully redesigned and rewritten or ultimately even removed from the app. Some features are fully remotely customizable. Some features are not super-polished but were performing well enough to be considered as deliverables. Our strategy was to gather the validated learning as fast as possible and we considered it way more important than delivering a super-polished version up front. In terms of polish, I think we weren’t that bad. When it comes to stability I managed to achieve around 99,9% crash-free sessions in the modules that I’ve been mostly responsible for.

Among my most important contributions, I find introducing continuous delivery and playground-driven development with solid architectural borders established at the project level. Both of them allowed us to save hundreds of development hours while being able to focus on delivering value to users fast.

It was a great journey and I’m thankful to the Strucc team to have a chance of working with something as exciting as a creative filmmaking tool. You can check the current version in the App Store.