Video archives into searchable intelligence

As Product Design Lead, I helped turn Linius Technologies’ Video Virtualisation Engine into Whizzard — a SaaS platform that enabled sports organisations, broadcasters, universities and media teams to search massive video archives, find specific moments, create highlights and publish content across channels.

I joined at inception and led design from product discovery through production, establishing the interaction model, information architecture and design system that became the foundation for Whizzard Portal, Highlights, Captivate and Flick.

4 products · ~50,000-hour archive deployment · 0→1 SaaS platform

Project snapshot

The challenge

The technology was new. The user’s job wasn’t.

Linius had developed technology that could transform video from static files into searchable, structured data.

But users didn’t want to understand video virtualisation. They wanted to find a player, locate a moment, create a highlight or publish content — often across archives containing thousands of hours of footage.

Traditional video-management tools were good at storing files. They were much less effective at helping people understand what was inside them.

The challenge was to turn an unfamiliar technical capability into familiar, useful workflows.

Why it was complex

A new interaction model

There were few established patterns for searching video as data, navigating transcripts and metadata, or moving directly from a search result into content creation.

Search had to lead to action

Finding a moment wasn’t the outcome. Users needed to review, select, curate, personalise and publish what they found.

One foundation, multiple products

Portal, Highlights, Captivate and Flick served different jobs while needing to behave as one coherent product family.

Multiple industries and devices

The same foundation had to support sports, education, broadcast and media workflows across desktop, mobile, tablet, OTT and client-branded experiences.

My role

From emerging technology to a product ecosystem.

I led design from early discovery through production while establishing the design foundations and practices needed for the product to scale.

Product Strategy

Translated the capabilities of the virtualisation engine into user problems, product opportunities and understandable workflows.

Product Design

Led research, information architecture, UX, interaction design and prototyping across search, playback, curation, highlights and publishing.

Product Ecosystem

Created shared experience foundations across Portal, Highlights, Captivate and Flick while allowing each product to serve a distinct use case.

Design Leadership

Established the design system and design practice, grew the design capability and worked closely with product, engineering, marketing and leadership as Whizzard matured.

Selected work

01 — Search as the front door

Making massive archives feel accessible.

Designed search around how people actually looked for content — players, teams, fixtures, events, dates and moments — then gave every result enough context to understand why it mattered.

Search UX Information Architecture Discovery

02 — From finding a moment to shaping a story

Connecting discovery directly to creation.

Designed workflows that moved naturally from search and playback into clip selection, transcript navigation, collections, highlight creation and publishing.

Interaction Design Video UX Complex Workflows

03 — One foundation, four products

Scaling the experience beyond the first product.

Created the first Whizzard design system and shared interaction patterns across Portal, Highlights, Captivate and Flick — including search, content cards, video players, metadata, navigation, responsive behaviour and white-label foundations.

Design Systems Product Architecture Scalable UI

Impact at a glance

Exposed the outcome, not the machinery

Organised Whizzard around familiar goals — search, review, curate, create and publish — rather than exposing the technical structure of video virtualisation.

Search became actionable

Connected archive discovery directly to preview, clip creation, collections, highlights and publishing instead of treating search results as the end of the journey.

Built an ecosystem, not a single app

Established the shared design and interaction foundations behind Portal, Highlights, Captivate and Flick.

Proven at archive scale

Supported deployments including an IMG archive of almost 50,000 hours of premium sports and entertainment content, searchable across multiple sports and federations.

Enabled smaller teams to create more

Whizzard and Highlights supported use cases such as a university media team producing and publishing highlight videos across its games without requiring a large editorial operation.