VIDYO — VIDEO PLATFORM

What if one video platform could be built — from scratch, by the first designer hire — to power surgery, defense, and a hotel's robot butler?

What if a video conferencing company facing rigid customer demands across six industries — from surgery to defense to fintech — could pivot the product paradigm itself?

PRODUCT STRATEGY & PARADIGM PIVOT CUSTOM UI FRAMEWORK (MV2C) API DESIGN & ENGINEERING PARTNERSHIP ENTERPRISE CUSTOMER RESEARCH MULTI-INDUSTRY UX PATTERNS

PRODUCT PARADIGM PIVOT CUSTOMER DISCOVERY — 6+ INDUSTRIES API & PLATFORM STRATEGY 0 → 1 PROTOTYPING & VALIDATION PRODUCT LINE STRATEGY (NEO → VIDYOCONNECT™)

The Vidyo Neo Connect

Vidyo

As the first designer hire at Vidyo, I flipped the product paradigm — from a single rigid enterprise UI to a customizable platform where each client could shape video conferencing around their workflow. The result: Vidyo Neo Connect, the foundation for what became the entire VidyoConnect™ product line.

As the first designer hire and de-facto product strategist, I led the product paradigm shift — from a single rigid client to a customizable platform across 6+ verticals. Owned customer discovery, API contract design, and 0→1 prototyping. Vidyo Neo Connect won leadership and became the foundation of the entire VidyoConnect™ product line.

ORIGIN

Vidyo delivers the highest-quality video conferencing service, on-premise solutions, and platform-as-a-service for enterprise customers. Like Zoom, but for Bloomberg.

The catch: enterprise video conferencing isn't one product. It's dozens of dramatically different products — each one a unique branded experience with different features for different roles. Hospitals need 5K resolution and cameras on wheels. Defense needs walls of video and mission control. Schools need moderator controls and report card distribution.

PROBLEM SOLVED

I designed and built a flexible platform that was good enough for the average enterprise and highly customizable for nuanced use cases. The pivot redefined what Vidyo owned (video) and what the customer owned (workflow).

MY ROLE

Senior / Lead DesignerFirst designer hire

SCOPE

Product strategy, UX,custom UI framework, API design

TIMELINE

Oct 2014 — May 2018~ 3 years 7 months

OUTCOMES

Vidyo Neo Connect builtVidyoConnect™ product line

I was faced with unique asks from very different customers — and asked to find the patterns underneath.

HEALTHCARE

Hospitals

Remote ICU monitoring. Surgery. 5K resolution. Cameras on wheels.

DEFENSE

Military & Gov

Enhanced security. Walls of video. Mission control rooms.

EDUCATION

Schools

Moderator controls. Distributing personal report cards live.

HOSPITALITY

Hotels

Yes — even a robot butler that took video calls.

FINANCE

Fintech

Speed-critical. Security-critical. Massive call volume.

TELEHEALTH

Remote care

Share prescriptions, medical history, remote control of equipment.

Vidyo had a single rigid enterprise client. It served the average customer poorly and the unique customers worse.

FOR END USERS

A complex, generic UI with no context.

The application showed every feature to every user. Hospital surgeons saw the same UI as school administrators. Enterprises couldn't add information relevant to their users into the application.

FOR ENTERPRISES

Forced to use a low-level API.

Clients who needed something custom had to consume Vidyo's low-level video SDKs and build their entire video product from scratch. Enterprises weren't experts at video. Vidyo wasn't expert at their workflows.

THE BROKEN PARADIGM

"The customer bears the burden of embedding video into their workflow."

Instead of asking enterprises to become video conferencing experts, I proposed a platform model: Vidyo owns the video. Customers own the workflow.

BEFORE

Enterprise is forced to be both video expert and domain expert — using low-level SDKs to build a custom client from scratch.

→

AFTER

Vidyo provides a customizable platform. Enterprises focus on their part — surfacing their workflow data inside the video UI Vidyo already optimized.

A flexible platform isn't a UX problem alone. It's a blend of design thinking and cutting-edge engineering — three legs of the stool had to be built in parallel.

PILLAR 01 · UI
A custom UI framework. Built MV2C — an Elm-MVC-inspired vanilla JS framework — so the platform could be customized fast without losing performance.
PILLAR 02 · API
Micro-event APIs. Worked with the backend team to expose micro-events — granular signals from each video session that the UI could react to.
PILLAR 03 · PHYSICS
Client-side video composition. Partnered with video rendering scientists to fine-tune Chromium and split a composite video into individual streams on the client.

PILLAR 01 · DEEP DIVE

MV2C — The UI framework I built.

For lack of a better name: Elm's MVC framework on double duty. A super-fast virtual-DOM-ish vanilla JavaScript framework designed for highly customizable real-time interfaces — reactive state, two-brain architecture, and scrappy enough to ship.

Reactive state machine Model Controller + UI Controller Scrappy and fast Vanilla JS, zero dependencies

PS — obviously a single-threaded prototypal JS framework, so it's slower than Elm's lower-level code. The tradeoff: zero dependencies, zero build chain, ships anywhere a customer's browser runs.

MV2C framework diagram — the two-brain Model Controller / UI Controller schematic.

Micro-events made the UI smart.

To support nuanced customer workflows, I needed granular signals out of the video session — bandwidth changes, participant focus shifts, screen share state, network drops. The backend had never exposed this granularity before. For the first time, they built APIs around exposing micro-events.

Splitting one video stream into many — on the client.

The flexible video streams

The legacy server pre-composed all participants into a single video tile. Customers couldn't rearrange, prioritize, or restyle individual participants. I partnered with the video rendering team to fine-tune Chromium to split one composite video into individual streams, opening the door to truly customizable layouts.

A flexible platform that was good enough for the average enterprise and highly customizable for nuanced use cases. The prototype won the hearts of business stakeholders, pilot enterprise customers, and Vidyo's leadership — and seeded the entire VidyoConnect™ product line.

The flexible platform UI that won leadership and seeded VidyoConnect™.

One paradigm shift. One new product line. A lot of firsts.

OUTCOME 01
VidyoConnect™ product line — Neo Connect became the foundation for Vidyo's flagship product, replacing the legacy enterprise client.
OUTCOME 02
MV2C framework adopted internally — the custom UI framework I built shipped across multiple Vidyo products and survived the company's eventual acquisition.
OUTCOME 03
Backend API redesigned — the micro-events architecture became a standard pattern for Vidyo's developer ecosystem.
OUTCOME 04
Client-side video composition — a Chromium-fine-tuned rendering pipeline gave customers per-tile customization for the first time.
OUTCOME 05
Won pilot customers across 6+ verticals — telehealth, defense, education, hospitality, fintech, and broadcast.

THE OUTCOME, IN A SENTENCE

"Vidyo Neo won the hearts of business, pilot enterprise customers, and Vidyo's leadership by leaps and bounds — and resulted in the creation of an entire new product line."

01
Find the pattern under the asks. Six industries gave me six totally different feature requests. The right move wasn't to build six products — it was to find the structural similarity (highly contextual UI on top of a stable video pipeline) and design that.
02
Sometimes the design IS the framework. To ship the design I wanted, I had to build the framework that could render it fast enough. MV2C wasn't an engineering side project — it was a design deliverable.
03
Move the boundary, not just the UI. The biggest insight wasn't a UI redesign — it was redrawing the line between what Vidyo owned (video) and what the customer owned (workflow). Once that boundary was right, the UI design was almost obvious.
04
Engineering listens when you speak their language. I came from a software engineering background at Goldman Sachs. At Vidyo, that meant the backend team trusted me when I asked for micro-events, and the rendering scientists trusted me when I asked them to split composite video on the client.
05
A prototype that wins the room is worth a thousand specs. Vidyo Neo Connect started as a prototype. By the time it hit business stakeholders and pilot customers, the conversation wasn't "should we build this" — it was "how fast can we ship it." Working prototypes change the politics.

01
Find the pattern in the customer asks. Six industries gave me six totally different feature requests. The right product strategy wasn't to build six products — it was to find the structural commonality (contextual UI on a stable video pipeline) and build that. Same insight every PM needs: aggregate the asks before you act on them.
02
Redrawing the product boundary IS the product strategy. The biggest leverage move wasn't a new feature — it was changing what Vidyo owned (video) vs. what the customer owned (workflow). Most PM work is boundary work. Get that right and the features almost design themselves.
03
0→1 prototypes change the politics. Vidyo Neo Connect started as a prototype. By the time it hit business stakeholders and pilot customers, the conversation wasn't "should we build this" — it was "how fast can we ship it." Working products beat spec docs every time.
04
Engineering trust is a PM superpower. I asked the backend team for micro-events nobody had built before. I asked the video rendering scientists to split composite video on the client. They both said yes — because I came from engineering and knew what I was asking for.
05
Product line strategy starts with a single product win. Vidyo Neo Connect was one prototype. By winning leadership, pilots, and customers — it became the seed of the entire VidyoConnect™ product line. The first product is the strategy bet.