How to Demo a Multiplayer or Collaborative Product
August 21, 2026
Shared documents, live boards, team inboxes, co-editing, presence indicators — the reason these products are worth paying for is what happens when someone else is there.
A recorder captures one browser, one user, one screen. That is the constraint to design around.
Record from one side, show the other arriving
Stay in one account for the whole demo, and let the second person appear as events: a cursor, an avatar, a comment, an edit that was not yours.
That is how collaboration is actually experienced — you are in your own screen and things happen. Recording it that way is both easier and more truthful than trying to show both sides at once.
Set up the second user before recording
- A second account with a plausible name and avatar, not "Test User 2".
- Existing history from them -- an earlier comment, a previous edit -- so they look like a colleague rather than a prop.
- A second browser or profile open, so you can trigger their actions between captures.
- Their notification, if you can capture it, showing what the other person received.
Presence needs motion, and steps have none
A live cursor moving is the single most convincing second in these products and cannot be conveyed by a still. This is the one place to spend a video step.
Everything else — comments, mentions, edits, resolved threads — works perfectly well as steps, so keep the clip to the one thing that needs it.
Demo the asynchronous half too
Most real collaboration is not simultaneous. Someone comments, you reply four hours later, someone else resolves it tomorrow.
That sequence is easy to capture as steps and matters more to most buyers than real-time editing, which tends to be the flashier but rarer case.
Permissions are the buying question
For team products, the person paying is asking who can see and do what — external guests, view-only links, admin controls.
A short step showing a guest's restricted view answers more of the purchase decision than another feature of the editor.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you demo a collaborative product with only one screen?
- Record from one account and let the second person appear as events -- a cursor, an avatar, a comment, an edit that was not yours. That is how collaboration is actually experienced, so it is both easier to record and more truthful than showing both sides.
- How do you show live presence in a stepped demo?
- A moving cursor is the one thing a still cannot convey, so it is worth a single video step. Comments, mentions, edits and resolved threads all work fine as ordinary steps.
- What do buyers of team products actually want to see?
- Permissions -- who can see and do what, external guests, view-only links, admin controls -- and the asynchronous flow of comment, reply, resolve. Real-time editing is flashier but rarer in daily use.
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