At Matterport, our products were siloed—capture on mobile native, editing on web, viewing in WebGL. Customers were literally mailing iPads to share files. We had two apps on the iOS app store: 1 for capturing and 1 for viewing. I led a 4-year initiative to unify the experience and the teams, setting a north star vision while shipping pragmatic solutions that closed the workflow gap.
Problem
Matterport’s product lived in three silos: capture on mobile native, permissions and sharing on web, editing & viewing 3D in WebGL. Two iOS apps shipped separately, one to capture and one to view. Customers were mailing iPads to hand files between team members, and the org structure mirrored the silos.
Constraints
No green field. We couldn’t rebuild the architecture overnight, the data models across platforms didn’t align, and any unification work had to ship alongside the existing product roadmap. The fix had to happen while the plane was flying.
Move
Set a north star, then ship the bridges in parallel. I ran a one-month design sprint that articulated a unified experience concept and sold a major platform investment directly to the CEO. From there we embedded the WebGL editor inside the native iOS app, enabled source data downloads, and collapsed two iOS apps into one, while the long-term target stayed in view: a unified data model for digital twins with layered data, version history, and continuous sync. GitHub for the built world.
Outcome
Customers got workflow completeness. The org got a north star that outlasted my tenure. I started this work as one of two designers and finished managing five inside a more integrated product, engineering, and design team.
