After three months of development and testing, we successfully released the initial feature to share to Instagram Stories. The API team then went back and dedicated an additional month to iterate on the feature. They also enabled Peloton’s Creative and Marketing teams to use unique campaign images and videos in the background from specific classes when they are shared, instead of the default video backgrounds.
During the development of this feature, we also had a learning moment working across teams. We typically follow a waterfall approach where finalized deliverables are handed off from team to team, but took a more iterative approach for this project, allowing our Engineering and Creative teams to work in parallel. Throughout this process, we learned how crucial it is to have continuous cross-team communication, and designing with flexibility in mind, in order to successfully complete the project.
When we were ready to launch, we turned to our marketing channels to educate our Members on the new sharing feature, inclusive of an announcement email,
blog post
, in-app notification,
Instagram post
, and of course, Instagram Story. We were excited to see a lot of interest from our Members and press in the integration. We were even more excited to then expand this feature to our Android Members in November 2020.