Awarded the Red Dot design, the MAXHUB UC M40 has become one of this year's best products for its attractive, functional, and innovative design.

From one-tap mode switching to the LED voice location indicator, the UC M40 turns even challenging spaces into productive meeting places. With a 360° panoramic wide-angle view and 5MP 4-lens camera, the UC M40 makes communication more direct and collaboration more natural and immersive.

To give a better understanding of why UC M40 could stand out from the competition, the MAXHUB UC Design Team sat down for this interview and offered us a behind-the-scenes story of the UC M40 all-in-one camera.

Q: Compared with similar products, what are the biggest innovations in the UC M40’s design?

Design Team: The UC M40 provides a "Face to Face" meeting experience for small and medium-sized meeting rooms. Four cameras can capture 360° close-range HD front portraits. This solves the problem of physical distortion and achieves seamless images. At the same time, the top is equipped with four omnidirectional microphones to achieve an omnidirectional sound pickup function, and the circular light can give voice positioning.

In terms of material selection, we specially choose the aluminum alloy design with cloth cover, so that the overall product looks and feels of a more advanced sense. At the same time, aluminum alloy materials offer better texture and performance (heat dissipation, shock-proofing capacity, etc.).

Q: What is the greatest value of its "simplicity" design for clients?

Design Team: The "simplicity" of the UC M40 can bring customers a better experience and feeling. The all-in-one audio and video hardware design avoids the combination of multiple devices. The USB cable saves the need for complicated configuration, achieving "simplicity" both in design and use. We hope the product can reduce the cost of learning for customers, and it can be used as soon as you get it and offers a great experience. In this way, our customers can fully engage themselves in the meeting without being distracted by product operations and adjustments.

Q: What are the innovative points of the UC M40's 360° camera design?

Design Team: The innovation lies in the seamless view of the four HD cameras with minimal image distortion, which is the first in video conferencing. The 360° panoramic camera can present a more complete and wide view, which greatly solves the problem of fish-eye lenses.

Q: Why did the team decide to design the UC M40 as a square column?

Design Team: We focused on beauty and practicality during the preliminary concept design phase. The square column can not only achieve differentiation from other competitive products on the market but also can offer a perfect grip after adjusting the best curvature of its shape.

Q: Can you briefly introduce the design of the UC M40? How did it go from conception to realization?

Design Team: After combining multiple user interviews and actual operations, we studied the whole market and conference scenarios and found out the customers' pain points in "pre-conference, mid-conference, and post-conference." The design team then brainstormed many creative concepts to compare before reaching a final concept design.

For example, we observed that during the meeting, the interaction between people and the product is required to make sure that the product is working, so we came up with the idea of adding a light reminder on the top and coordinating with the function of the sound source positioning to solve this pain point. This begs another question, at what height should the light be placed? People in meetings usually use laptops, so the only way to avoid being blocked by computers is to set the light prompt on the top of the product. This is a way of design thinking. First, find the problem, analyze the situation, and finally solve the problem.

Q: What difficulties and challenges did you encounter during the design process? How did you overcome them?

Design Team: It is pretty challenging when the concept is undecided early because B-end products need to offer design aesthetics and a great user experience. We have a very strict internal balance between these two concepts to ensure that they can satisfy our customers.

Q: How do you define good design?

Design Team: Good design is not limited to eye-catching shape, color, and other dominant elements. We hope to inspire more creative design concepts through insights into usage scenarios and interactive experiences. Good design requires a balance between design aesthetics and user experience.

Q: Can you briefly share the UC product design philosophy of MAXHUB?

Design Team: Simplicity, technology, and excellence. We aim to simplify and remove any redundant and unreasonable design elements, leaving only the most valuable to our customers.

For more information about the UC M40, please visit https://www.maxhub.com/en/ucm40.