Watch Party

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  Inside the room: Watching the game with video

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  Main page: Create or Join a room

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  Main page: Room name input

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  Livesport: find a broadcast link

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  Create a room: Broadcast url input

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  Room created: Alone in the room

Inspiration

Spending every Saturday supporting your local team on home or away grounds is not only about sports. It's about community! Every time your team wins or loses you have a lot to discuss with your friends - the ones you go to the stadium with or stick to the TV at home or in a bar when none of you was lucky to get the tickets.

But what if... Life separates you from your friends and you're all spread across the world and time zones? You still have to find a way to watch your favorite sports together, borderless.

Live streaming services have been working for you for years but wait... Combination of ESPN or Reddit (to find legal content) + SopCast or ACE Stream (to play the content) + Skype or Discord or Zoom (to speak with your friends) doesn't look like a hassle-free watch party solution.

We think we can do it better. Here is our vision:

What it does

Watch Party makes it easier to watch live sports collectively:

• Create and customize your room;
• FInd a broadcast source;
• Invite your friends using a direct link;
• Enjoy video chat with your friends while watching the game.

How we built it

1. Started thinking of sports fans audience, googled for rough market estimations and constraints to understand our fit and potential.
2. Identified competitors. Performed a brief feature set analysis.
3. Interviewed 5 SopCast users to define their typical customer journey and pain points.
4. Created a mockup of our product with the minimum required feature set. Shown it to the focus group. Got some feedback.
5. Researched technologies and developed the prototype.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was the time limit. We started coding only 6 days before the deadline (what is rather risky) but it helped us focus on basic features. And finally, it works smoothly and stable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we could quickly crystallize core product requirements from our potential users' interviews. Nevertheless, we keep in mind much more of their demands and ideas as our possible future steps.

What we learned

We got some important hands-on experience on technology that I (surprisingly) first saw in the app called Bunch.

What's next for Watch Party

Nearest steps:

• Bugfix;
• Soft launch;
• Feedback analysis;
• Metrics analysis.

More hypotheses check:

• User-generated content;
• Deeper personalization;
• Curated stream sources;
• Watch scheduling;
• ...

PS:

Some tips for testing:

• Main page: https://watchparty.me
• Find a broadcast on livesport.ws (right-click "Watch" on any of currently online channels)
• Pre-made always on Watch Party room called 1tv: https://watchparty.me/Home/RoomByName?name=1tv

Built With

• agora-sdk
• node.js
• sopcast