Designing for mission-critical conferencing: Why you need more than ‘modern’ and ‘slick’  

VQ Conference Manager forms a core part of our customers’ ability to communicate, particularly during emergencies and other mission-critical situations. For more than 20 years, it’s been used in government, defense, intelligence, and enterprise to support discussions on national security, critical infrastructure, public health, and business continuity. 

Designing user experiences for high-stakes meetings 

In this world, more than any other, user experience design is about more than just having a product that looks ‘modern’ or ‘slick’. Software used in this space has to be carefully designed to empower people working in high-stress situations.  

For operators, constant situational awareness is vital. But so too is minimizing cognitive load. This results in a need to carefully balance between not enough information and too much. Meanwhile, powerful controls to manage meetings and participants at scale, but without overwhelming the operator, are another non-negotiable. Continuity and familiarity of the whole environment for administrators, operators, and end users is similarly important.  

It’s because of its criticality to our customers’ operations that we’ve historically resisted the temptation to alter the user experience of our Meeting Services product. This is the part of our platform where operators manage their organizations’ most important meetings. Hundreds of happy clients tell us it works well, so we knew any changes had to be purposeful and carefully considered. 

A new VQ Design System 

As a business always striving to improve the way we support our customers, we’ve been working behind the scenes to make the right enhancements to Meeting Services.  

The first phase of this has been the creation of a new VQ Design System. This is based on the industry-standard Material Design 3 from Google, which is behind many of the digital products all of us use on a regular basis. Software designed in this way therefore has the advantage of feeling familiar and intuitive to the majority of people. 

We piloted the VQ Design System in our Device Management and Automation (DMA) product, and subsequently our Metro self-service apps.  This enabled us to rigorously stress-test it in collaboration with live customers. Numerous refinements based on their feedback mean we’re now ready to roll it out to Meeting Services. And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing in our 4.9 release. 

What user interface enhancements can customers expect in VQ Conference Manager 4.9? 

Operators signing into VQ Conference Manager 4.9 will enjoy a modernized look and feel, thanks to the VQ Design System having been applied. 

Crucially though, it will also feel very familiar. This is because of the industry-standard patterns our design system uses, and the fact that the overall user experience remains as it was before. Operators will be able to pick up the new version and continue to manage their meetings as they do now. 

Your administrators, who may be using Meeting Services and DMA to manage different parts of your conferencing ecosystem, will benefit from a more consistent experience across the board. 

Multi-language support and accessibility enhancements 

And that isn’t all. People using Metro and DMA can already change the user interface language. We’re now extending this to Meeting Services, where you can choose from English (US & UK), German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Polish, and Arabic. There will be more coming in future releases – if you have a particular requirement, please contact us. 

Lastly, the design enhancements in Meeting Services move us further along our journey towards full compliance with WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards, as well as US Section 508 and the European Accessibility Act. 

Coming next: Enhancements driven by cutting-edge human factors research 

In parallel with the creation of the VQ Design System, our user experience team has been working on deeper-level improvements, which will be launching in 2027. We’ve partnered with a leading human factors R&D lab, to draw on the latest research into user experience design of mission-critical systems.  

So as well as being ‘modern’ and ‘slick’, the user experience will be meticulously optimized to empower people operating in what are often stressful, high-stakes, mission-critical environments.  

We’ll be sharing more information about this work, the research behind it, and the advantages customers will enjoy, over the coming months. 

So if you aren’t already, make sure you sign up to our newsletter, to ensure you’re among the first to get these updates.  

How do I get started with VQ Conference Manager 4.9?  

Coming back to the present, you can unlock the benefits of VQ Conference Manager 4.9 today. 

If you’re an existing customer, please email support@vqcomms.com or contact to your VQ Communications Customer Success Manager, to request your upgrade. 

Folks new to VQ Conference Manager can speak to our sales team, who’ll be delighted to get the ball rolling for you.