In 2018, Oblong began work on their first SaaS collaboration product. I worked closely with the executive team from product inception through launch roughly 12 months later. Rumpus is a free-to-use software that integrates with existing remote AV technologies (Zoom, Webex, and Bluejeans). Users download the app for free, log in with existing credentials, and conduct video meetings as usual but with a new UI and unique collaboration affordances.

The product requirements were to capture the best bits of our room-based solutions and distill them into a software only application. Product design focused on features that allowed remote participants to more clearly collaborate in human terms. When meeting participants aren’t colocated, how do we capture human gesture or convey emotion and reaction? How can the UI support conversation rather than hinder it?

Rumpus allows multiple participants to share live content at that same time. All users choose in real-time which content they want to see. Other participants see who’s engaged with what content, and the UI offers many other collaboration features to enhance conversation and reaction: shared cursors, annotation over live shares, and other convenient emotive tools.

In addition to consulting closely on UX and UI, I worked directly with John Underkoffler and the talented folks at Ferro Concrete to name and brand the product. We developed a flexible system for branding, messaging, and marketing to create a unique, playful personality for the product. Rumpus was launched in Spring of 2019.

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