Leroy Matthews

Lead Product Designer

Work Play
About

Native Video Player

A scroll-to-play video player designed to feel native to every publisher.

  • Nativo
  • Product Design
  • Interaction Design
  • Video
  • SDK / Embedded UI

The Challenge

Video ads on publisher sites were disruptive and inconsistent — competing players, jarring autoplay, and poor performance. Nativo needed a video player that felt like part of the publisher’s content, not an ad bolted on top.

Approach

I designed a scroll-to-play player that respects the reader: playback tied to viewport visibility, sound off by default, controls that adapt to each publisher’s look. The design had to hold up across an SDK powering thousands of placements.

Outcome

A native video player that shipped at scale across the publisher network, raising completion rates while keeping the reading experience intact.

What I Did

  • Player interaction model and visual design.
  • Scroll-to-play behavior and autoplay rules.
  • SDK theming system for publisher adaptation.
  • Competitive analysis of the video player landscape.
Scroll-to-play — playback tied to the reader’s viewport.
Scroll-to-play — playback tied to the reader’s viewport.
The player at scale across the publisher network.
The player at scale across the publisher network.
Landscape audit — competing video players.
Landscape audit — competing video players.
Where we started — the legacy player.
Where we started — the legacy player.
SDK theming for publisher adaptation.
SDK theming for publisher adaptation.