Inside Brightcove Prism: How UX Consistency Became a CX Advantage

What does it take to redesign a video platform used by teams across marketing, editorial, and media operations at scale?

In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche sits down with Alessandro Fumi, Product Manager at Brightcove, and Matteo Paoli, Product Designer at Brightcove, to unpack the thinking behind Prism, Brightcove’s newly redesigned platform interface.

The discussion explores how feedback from more than 100 customers shaped Prism’s focus on usability, consistency, and clearer information hierarchy. Fumi and Paoli explain why interface consistency matters in large-scale video operations, how onboarding has become critical as non-technical users increasingly rely on video tools, and how accessibility and design systems influence day-to-day productivity.

The conversation also looks ahead, covering Brightcove’s post-Prism roadmap, including embedded AI features, quality-of-life improvements, and ongoing design priorities that aim to support faster workflows without disrupting existing operations.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello everyone and welcome back to CX Today. My name is Francesca Roche. I'm a technology journalist today discussing Brightcove's launch of Prism, a complete redesign of the company's platform interface and one of the most significant evolutions of its product experience in recent years. Now, this product is designed to bring the user experience in line with the scale and sophistication of Brightcove's underlying video technology, introducing a modern, unified interface focusing on greater clarity, consistency and usability across the platform that aims to help teams work more efficiently whilst preserving the powerful workflows they rely on every day. And as part of Brightco's broader period of accelerated innovation, Prism now represents a major step forward in how customers interact with the platform. And today we'll be exploring the thinking behind the redesign and the customer feedback that shaped it, and also what it means for video teams moving forward. And joining me today to tell us a bit more about this is Alessandro Fumi, product manager at Brightcove, and Matteo Pauli, product designer at Bright Cove. Now, before we get into the discussion, Alessandro, I'll ask you first, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I'm doing great. Thank you for inviting us here.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Lovely. And Mateo, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Also great. Thanks for taking the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Lovely to meet you both. Now, first, Brightcove has noted that the redesign was informed by feedback from more than 100 customers. Um, Alessandro, firstly, what were the biggest usability problems or friction points that customers reported before the Prism redesign? And how did those insights shape the final product decisions?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Yeah, sure, that's a great question, Francesca. And uh Breitkov was uh was uh started in 2004, over 20 years ago, and over the years it has evolved significantly as a platform. Uh it it was consistently the um the best and like best of the market uh um video engagement platform, and over time it evolved with the needs of the customers that obviously uh changed. As such, we found uh three areas of major improvement where we uh wanted to bring uh the platform itself and the user experience to the level of the technology behind it, bring it uh more consistently across the different modules. That's what we call the different parts of the platform, then fewer clicks uh when it comes to the most uh important and the core um operations that are done day to day in the platform. And finally, also a better hierarchy of the information. We try to achieve that, and ultimately, I think the result is a platform that is more intuitive to use, easier to onboard on, um, easier to discover new features on, and essentially even faster uh to make the day-to-day operations uh smoother. Um, we did so by incorporating uh over a hundred interviews and uh talking to like many, many customers and understanding how they use it every day within their specific workflow. And uh I think that's uh the a major achievement.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Mateo, what about you? Can you tell us more from the product design side?

SPEAKER_02 3:37

I think also on our side uh most of the work was really about uh creating an experience that was really uh consistent but also in line with all of the technology that was behind. So, from our perspective as a design team, we try to put all of it uh into you know standardized patterns and all of the classical rules that make the product very usable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Amazing. And just sort of following on what you said there, Mateo, on consistency. Something that Prism focuses heavily on across the platform is consistency. So can you explain firstly why interface consistency is particularly important in large-scale video operations and media workflows?

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Yeah, absolutely. Uh I think that's a key point for us. Uh I think like our users uh can uh perform different actions. Uh, you need to imagine they could upload a video, then schedule a live stream, or maybe then uh getting insights from analytics, and all of these workflows uh live in the same product. So building a platform that has a consistent interface, so where information are displayed in a certain manner, and we you know standardize some interaction and patterns, realow them to switch between one task and the other and perform it in a way that is you know in line with all of the others, meaning that you start and learn one thing, and then after you can apply the same logics to the others without having to switch context too much, uh, in terms at least of the performance you do, especially on a big scale, is quite important, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Absolutely, I think consistency is obviously something users only notice when it's missing, so it's good to hear how much impact that can have on productivity. Alessandro, it'd be great to hear um from your side why interface consistency is particularly important in large-scale video operations.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Oh, yeah, definitely. So um Brightcove customers are can be like from companies from any different size. And if we think about like large corporations, they have more they can have multiple teams that are using Brightcove at the same time, from the marketing team to the editorial team and so forth. And we want to make sure everybody is on board with the platform. So adding consistent experience makes it easier for new members or new teams, new departments to make sure to fully utilize the platform, on top of uh leveraging every uh feature that it like the platform provides to the customers.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Absolutely. And now Brightcove has also noted that they're making the platform more beginner-friendly, so it's more accessible for everyone. Can you explain firstly, Alessandro, how important onboarding and accessibility are now that video teams often include, you know, a lot of non-technical users?

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Definitely, definitely, uh absolutely. So if we look at the customers' evolution in the past years, we started from a customer base that was uh mostly technical to a customer base that is, yes, technical, but it can be also, as I was mentioning, users from any department, including uh people with not a technical background. So it's really important that we make sure that the platform is very usable, very understandable for that perspective. And AI is also helping us quite a lot in that we are developing uh new solutions that uh enable us to uh and our customers to access the features that we provide easier and faster in a more intuitive way with chats and uh with agents.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

That's great. And Mateo from your side, can you explain how important for the design perspective, how important accessibility is for those non-technical users?

SPEAKER_02 7:33

I think uh we said it also before, like our uh technology allows you to do many things that could be even very complex. So giving you a simple UX and especially creating a platform that is easy to read and understand is quite crucial. I would say we we really worked on hierarchy, contrasts, and scholars in order to make sure that the user understands what's the primary action, what's the secondary action, what is the main important part of the page, and so on. But at the same time, I think Brightkov, it's always been focused on accessibility on a broader term because we work with uh you know captions, uh audio descriptions, uh, and all of the compliance also of the video industry, which is quite important uh not just for the interface, but also for the content that we distribute uh via and uh and consumers as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, absolutely. I think accessibility and onboarding is now almost more increasingly important than ever for these modern enterprise softwares, especially now that a lot of other competitors we're not ignoring those smaller companies anymore, for example, we have to target everyone. And since the acquisition of um of Bending Spoons, uh Brightco says product delivery has accelerated. Um, Mateo, first from your side, how has that changed the way product design and customer feedback teams work together?

SPEAKER_02 8:58

I think uh um this is one of the most uh exciting things of my day-to-day work. I think we sit at the same table together, so product uh and design and engineering uh from day one are working you know together in order to create the experience as we want. And I think Prism at the end of the day is really the result uh of a great collaboration we had between the three parts. Um, and this is also part of the uh acceleration that you called. I think it's what is what really like our team is trying to bring on the table, and this is also I think very exciting from my perspective with the result we we achieved.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Absolutely, and from your side, Alessandra, it would be lovely to hear.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Definitely. So if you think about how bending spoons operates, uh we uh when we acquire a company, we have a dedicated product team that works on the company. Uh, and specifically, uh, if we look at bending spoons, 80% of the people are uh uh product designers, uh product managers, engineers, and so forth. We're very technical. And uh we have two things that distinguish bending spoons. The first one is technology, we have technologies that are foundation technologies that can be applied and used to improve any product that we acquire. And the second one is talent density. We operate with small teams that have um a few members, but no hierarchy essentially, like very flat. Uh we can take decisions very quickly and uh with a lot of ownership and the talent density is very high. So I think that really helps us uh uh sit close to the customer and iterate very quickly when we get some feedback. So again, we mentioned before 100 interviews uh for this uh Prism launch and for the roadmap launch, and I think uh across all those interviews, we really sit together uh close to the um close to the customers, incorporating their feedback, building quickly, and then uh iterating again and making sure that what we delivered was up to expectations and uh really embedded into the workflows of the customers.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

And just before we finish our discussion for today, Brightcove has described Prism as the beginning of a broader platform evolution. Um Alessandro, we'll start with you. Can you explain what CX improvements or design priorities users can expect from Brightcove through the rest of 2026?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yeah, definitely. Um as you know, in the last 12 months we delivered more than 20 improvements across the platform, and we want to continue in the path that uh um Prism started, let's say. Uh the first uh area of improvement is gonna be the AI features. We want them to be embedded uh within the platforms. Think about AI chaptering or live automated clipping, not uh they're not gonna be disruptive to the workflows but uh incrementative. The second area is going to be um essentially what we call quality of life improvements, which are improvements to the day-to-day operations of our customers. Uh, think about uh live search, or uh also we have the player revamp that uh Matt is working on. And uh and finally, we um we have also more um deep uh uh improvements that we are providing to the platform if we think about the live infrastructure or the user activity logs that we are enhancing and expanding for uh forward.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Amazing, and it'd be great to hear, Mateo, from your perspective, the design priorities.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

I think for us, um, as Ale was anticipating, we are working on uh uh revamping also the player look, but I think uh to me the biggest priority among with all of the new features coming up will be uh keeping up with the consistency, the design system uh and the patterns that Prism brought on the table. Uh, because as we talked about, uh basically this is about enhancing all of the product and uh stepping up uh to a level where basically all the actions you could perform from the most complex to the easy one are built on a solid design base. So I guess our priorities will be while shipping new features to always keep that level of robust and consistent uh uh design that is at the base of our product. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Absolutely, I think it's great to see like there's still that consistency at the heart there. Um, now unfortunately, that is all we have time for today, but I would like to thank Alessandra and Mateo for being here. It's been really insightful discussing Bright Coast Prism redesign, customer-led product innovation, and the future of user experience across the company's video platform. So, thank you so much for joining me, and from all of us at CXDay, thanks for watching. Goodbye.