Background
Investors were moving from PDFs to video. Quarterly reports were increasingly consumed as CEO interviews and live presentations, and a Finnish platform had already built a strong position across the Nordics.
Dagens Industri had everything needed to compete – the Nordic’s biggest business audience, its own studios, and the trust of listed companies. What it didn’t have was the technology. That’s where we came in.
We pitched a partnership: Di brings the audience and the brand, my company builds and runs the service behind it. One year later, it launched as Di Investor Relations.
How the service works
Behind every quarterly report broadcast are five roles, each with a different job.
| Role | Who | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Operator | My team | Sets up and runs the broadcast |
| Speakers | CEO, CFO | Presents the report and answers questions during the broadcast |
| Participants | Analysts, experts, investors | Asks questions live (desktop) |
| Callers | Analysts, experts, investors | Asks questions live (phone) |
| Viewers | Di.se visitors | Watches the broadcast on Di.se |
Our research showed that nobody – neither the listed companies nor Bonnier – wanted to run a technical platform themselves. So the service was designed as a package, with my company operating every broadcast as part of the contract.
The guiding principle: Seamless
Behind the scenes, the service runs on four products, two brands and five roles. In front, it should feel like one thing: a company holds a broadcast, and it appears where its investors are already reading.
Every design decision aimed to hide the seams – between products, between Qbrick and Di, and between the people taking part.
Design decisions
Every role gets its own way in
A CEO about to present, an analyst with a question and a reader on Di.se have nothing in common except the broadcast. Instead of one shared meeting experience, like Teams or Zoom, each role gets its own entry point and its own view.
Example
Four ways into the same broadcast
Speakers get a direct link from the operator. Participants fill in a form and receive an invitation by email. Callers use the same form, but get a phone number to dial. Viewers sign up next to the player, wherever it’s embedded.
One list for the operator
However people join, they end up in the same participants list (except for viewers), tagged and filterable by role. The operator can find someone with a question in seconds, and mute, unmute or move people between rooms.
A speaker sees only what they need
The CEO sees their colleagues and the presentation – and can change slides themselves.
Operator’s view in the live management tool — participants list
Di in front, our design behind
Readers should never notice that another company is powering the video. Everything the audience sees – widgets, player, forms, emails – is branded as Dagens Industri. Everything the operator uses stays in my company’s platform.
Example
Designing for Di.se without Di’s design system
For the first nine months, we didn’t have access to Bonnier’s design system or team. I studied Di.se’s live site and rebuilt its design language component by component. When Bonnier’s UX team joined, they translated my designs into their system – the final components match about 80%.
My Di.se widget design
The final Di.se widget design
Video channels in two layers
Participating companies also show their videos on their own investor pages. I redesigned our video channels in two layers: the structure (grid, hierarchy, video components) stays locked to the Di look, while logo, colours and details follow each company’s brand.
Video on company’s website with slides and chat
Build on whatever works
With one year and no existing webcast tool, building everything from scratch wasn’t an option. So we built on what already worked – ours and others’.
Example
Open source video conference tool
Instead of building a video meeting tool, we integrated an open-source one, Jitsi Meet, into our live streaming platform. We got webcams, invitations, screen sharing and chat for free, and added our own layer on top: the participants list, moderation and slides. Today, all of my company’s customers can use it – not just Bonnier.
Slides inside the player
Our competitor showed video and slides side by side on a full page – which can’t be embedded and works poorly on mobile. We built the slides into our own video player instead, so the presentation works on any screen and anywhere the player is embedded.
Presenter view — video, slides and participants in one place
Make every setup quick
Each broadcast needs two forms – one for viewers, one for participants – and several emails each. The operator would be doing this every earnings season.
Example
Smart defaults
Fields come pre-filled with neutral text that works for most events. A language picker translates every field at once. Dynamic tags fill in the event name and date automatically, so nothing needs updating by hand if the schedule changes.
Email setup with smart defaults and dynamic tags
What we left out
Setting up a broadcast means moving through several products in a fixed order: creating the live event, adding forms, inviting speakers, uploading slides. A creation wizard would have tied it together, but it didn’t fit the deadline. Since the operators were our own team, we accepted the friction for version 1.
Impact
20+ listed companies onboard
75+ videos and livestreams on Di.se
Visibility increase of over 700%
According to our analytics tool.
A new business for Bonnier News
And a new webcast product for my company’s other customers.
See it at Di.se
What I learned
Cross-team projects have to be cross-team from the start. Bonnier’s team joined nine months into a twelve-month project, so late ideas and problems surfaced exactly when we had the least time to handle them. In a partnership like this, I would push for both teams to be in the room from the first design meeting.