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SETS

Principal Product Designer
Creative collaboration tools
Multi-product design system
Native iOS

Designing for creative production professionals: multiplatform UX at Sohonet

Own cross-cutting UX spanning multiple teams and workflows

Focus on foundational system design rather than isolated features

Partner closely with Product and Engineering on problem framing and scope

Define shared mental models and interaction patterns

Work in high-ambiguity environments with unclear ownership

Managing a scalable, multi-product and cross-platform design system

I currently manage and evolve the design system that supports Rush, Core, and the broader Sohonet product suite, ensuring a cohesive visual language across web, iOS (iPhone & iPad), and Apple TV.

The system includes full support for both light and dark themes, with all components built using variable-based tokens that adapt seamlessly across platforms. From spacing and typography to interaction patterns and iconography, every element is structured for reusability and consistency, without sacrificing flexibility as the suite continues to grow.

ClearView Rush: Designing for high-speed creative review across platforms

ClearView Rush is a fast and secure review tool for TV and film production — built to get dailies in front of the right people quickly. It’s used by editors, directors, producers, and post supervisors, each with their own workflows, technical demands, and mental models. Designing for it meant navigating complexity without slowing anyone down.

Bridging desktop and web

While reviewers interact in a browser or a device, uploading assets begins in a separate, high-performance desktop application. Here’s how we designed the bridge between ingest and review: users start in the desktop app to ingest and transcode high-res footage. Once complete, assets sync to the web, where users review, organise, and publish the asset, making it viewable to their teams.

Design goals for the upload flow:

Seamless handoff between desktop and browser environments
Clear progress feedback during long upload/transcode processes
Immediate visual confirmation of what's been ingested (clip previews, audio tracks, proxies, and metadata)

A detailed asset preview in the browser lets users review every component before it ever reaches a reviewer. The import side panel offers a thorough, scene-by-scene breakdown including timecodes, thumbnails, and descriptions, giving users visibility and control before publishing. It’s a final checkpoint where footage can be reviewed, refined, and routed to the right reviewers with confidence.

Reviewer-centric by design

Once an asset is published, the reviewer's experience takes centre stage. Rush is built around who needs to see the footage, when, and in what context, not just the files themselves.

Footage is routed to categorised review type groups (like daillies, cuts, or personal watchlists), each with tailored access levels that define approval features, metadata visibility, and download rights. This ensures editors can scrub with frame precision while execs get a clean, high-level view.

Each reviewer’s dashboard surfaces their assigned footage, along with recent activity and review status, so teams stay aligned without chasing updates.

From first import to final approval, every touchpoint is optimised for clarity, speed, and context, making Rush feel less like another tool and more like part of the production fabric.

A media player built for production nuance

Rush’s custom media player isn’t just a way to watch video — it’s a tailored tool for high-stakes review and approval. Whether it’s a director scanning the dailies, a VFX team checking for continuity, or an exec looking for a quick overview, the player adapts to the needs of each viewer.

At its core is a dynamic navigation model that adjusts to the type of review being conducted. For dailies, users can navigate shot by shot, with granular control and filtering by camera or shoot order. For editorial cuts, the experience shifts to a scene-by-scene flow aligned with the edit structure. Each mode supports sorting, filtering, and visual scanning to accelerate decision-making.

Controls are modular and streamlined. The default minimised control bar ensures the footage gets maximum space, ideal for high-level executive reviewers who want clarity and focus. For power users like editors or post supervisors, expanded controls and gallery mode unlock richer functionality: quickly locate specific scenes, cross-reference metadata like timecodes and shot numbers, and verify the content before sending it forward in the workflow.

Everything is engineered to prioritise speed, clarity, and minimalism — letting the footage lead, while the tools stay quietly powerful in the background.

Designing for native devices: iPad and Apple TV

Rush users operate at production speed, reviewing footage in the edit suite, on set, in the air, or at home. To accommodate these diverse contexts, we designed native experiences for iPad and Apple TV, rather than just scaled-down versions of the web app.

iPad Experience

On iPad, our focus is on speed, flexibility, and usability in motion:

Touch-native controls: Larger tap targets, swipe-to-navigate, and hold-to-scrub interactions.
Offline mode: Download cuts for review in remote locations or while travelling.
Flow consistency: Key review actions mirror those on desktop, minimising cognitive load.

Apple TV Experience

Conversely, on Apple TV, the emphasis shifts to a lean-back, content-first viewing experience:

High-res playback: Optimised for large screens and cinematic viewing.
Minimal interface: Clean, elegant controls designed for remote use.
Watch-first experience: Crafted for high-trust, high-fidelity viewing moments.

By giving equal importance to each device, we ensure a consistent and production-ready experience, whether users are reviewing on the go, in a room, or on the couch.

Core Mobile: designing for always-on access

While ClearView Rush powers review during production, Core is where the assets live — across releases, reuses, and lifecycles. It’s a long-term asset management platform trusted by studios to store, track, and repurpose content for marketing, merchandising, localisation, and beyond.

When Sohonet acquired Core, my first focus was rethinking its mobile experience. Unlike Rush, where the priority is high-speed playback during production, Core mobile needed to balance permanence with agility: a fast, lightweight way to browse, review, and act on a growing library of critical assets — from anywhere.

For busy studio execs, the mobile app became a key touchpoint. They needed to approve deliverables fast, without blocking entire workflows. My goal was to design a mobile experience that respected the depth of Core’s infrastructure while surfacing just the right level of information for time-sensitive decisions.

Platform-level impact

Reduced fragmentation by establishing shared interaction models
Made opaque or anxiety-inducing system logic understandable and usable
Created UX foundations that enabled other teams to build with confidence
Shifted conversations from feature fixes to system-level solutions