JCJesse Coleman
Selected work
04

POLYCOM · INVENTION

Designing adaptive multi-screen layouts

A video layout is easy when every room has one screen and one camera. The real design problem begins when every endpoint is different.

ROLEProduct designer · Interaction strategist
SCOPEMulti-screen video · Multi-camera rooms · Layout behavior
CONTEXTRules → diagrams → prototypes → patent-related work
1–3screens at an endpoint
1–4camera streams per room
5core behavior rules
3patents as a designer
S

SITUATION

Immersive rooms created a combinatorial layout problem.

A call could connect a one-screen room to two- or three-screen rooms, each contributing one or several camera streams. A layout that worked for one combination could crop people, shrink the active speaker, introduce empty space, or reshuffle the entire meeting when a new site joined.

My contribution was to turn those configurations into a product-behavior model: rules that balanced human attention, video integrity, room geometry, and technical constraints.

FROM COMPLEXITY TO BEHAVIOR

A layout engine shaped by human priorities.

The design contribution was not a single arrangement. It was a decision model that could adapt as the room, call, and content changed.

INPUTS

Read the room

  • Number of screens
  • Camera streams and aspect ratios
  • Active and recent speakers
  • Shared content and audio state
PRIORITIES

Protect meaning

  • Maximize the active speaker
  • Preserve spatial relationships
  • Show useful participation
  • Minimize disruptive movement
BEHAVIOR

Adapt predictably

  • Choose a valid layout
  • Keep speaker position stable
  • Give content precedence
  • Respect user-selected views
T

TASK

Define what a good layout should preserve before defining every possible arrangement.

Rather than draw a separate screen for every permutation, I established priorities the system could use when choosing among valid layouts. The rules made tradeoffs explicit and gave design and engineering a shared basis for evaluating edge cases.

01

Protect the active speaker. Give the person speaking the largest useful area while accounting for camera count and the integrity of each video stream.

02

Preserve the source. Avoid cropping, stretching, or wrapping multi-camera streams in ways that break the spatial relationship of the room.

03

Show as many sites as possible. Prioritize the active speaker, recent speakers, and unmuted video without creating a visually noisy wall of tiny windows.

04

Avoid disruptive movement. Keep layouts stable when participants join or leave so attention stays on the meeting instead of the interface.

05

Treat content as a first-class mode. Let shared content take precedence while the remaining displays continue to provide useful meeting presence.

A

APPROACH

The diagrams made room geometry part of the interaction model.

The model accounted for monitor profiles, camera count, the aspect ratio of combined streams, whether content was being shared, speaking history, audio state, and user-selected layouts. That let the experience adapt without pretending every endpoint was identical.

The most important design decision was persistence: changes should feel intentional. A new participant should not automatically destroy the speaker position or force everyone to relearn where people are on screen.

R

RESULT

The work translated experience goals into system behavior precise enough to implement and protect.

The multi-screen layout concepts contributed to Polycom’s patent-related work and demonstrate a form of product design that is easy to overlook: not styling a screen, but defining how a complex system should make decisions.

I use the same approach today—frame the experience goals, expose the variables, establish priorities, and make the rationale visible before teams commit to a solution.

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