Why Good AV Equipment Still Fails: The 10 Mistakes Businesses Make When Designing Meeting Rooms
- marktildesley
- 4 days ago
- 12 min read
Introduction: When good technology produces a bad experience
The camera is from a leading manufacturer. The display is more than large enough. The microphones are professional. The room runs Microsoft Teams. The network is fast.
Everything has been installed correctly.
And yet, somehow, the meeting room still doesn't work particularly well.
Meetings start with somebody searching for the right cable. Remote participants complain that they cannot hear everyone around the table. The camera frames the wrong part of the room. People instinctively turn towards the screen rather than looking towards the camera. Content sharing works, but only after somebody has explained how to make it work. The room is technically operational, but using it feels harder than it should.
This is one of the most interesting contradictions in modern workplace technology: businesses can spend significant amounts of money on high-quality AV equipment and still end up with a disappointing meeting experience.
The problem is rarely that the equipment is bad.
More often, the problem is that we have confused buying good AV equipment with designing a good AV environment.
Those are not the same thing.
A meeting room is not a collection of products. It is a system in which the physical room, acoustics, lighting, displays, cameras, microphones, speakers, collaboration platform, network, control interface and, most importantly, the people using it all have to work together.
That distinction matters because the design decisions made before anyone orders a camera or display can have a greater impact on the eventual user experience than the specification of the equipment itself.
At Collab AV, we see this principle repeatedly. The most successful meeting rooms are not necessarily the rooms with the most expensive technology. They are the rooms where the technology has been selected, designed and integrated around what people actually need to achieve.
So why do otherwise good AV projects fail to deliver?
There are ten mistakes we see businesses making again and again.
1. Starting with the equipment rather than the problem
Perhaps the most common mistake is also the most understandable.
A business decides that a meeting room needs upgrading and immediately starts looking at products.
Which camera should we buy? Which display? Which soundbar? Should we use Microsoft Teams Rooms? Would a larger screen be better? Is there a new AI-enabled camera that we
should consider?
They are simply not the questions that should come first.
Before selecting technology, organisations should understand how the room is actually going to be used. How many people will typically be in it? How often will meetings involve remote participants? Is it primarily used for internal meetings, customer presentations, training, collaboration or executive discussions? Will people regularly share detailed content? Does the room need to support BYOD? Is it part of a larger estate where consistency matters?
A small meeting room used predominantly for two or three people joining remote meetings has very different requirements from a twenty-person boardroom used for client presentations. A training room has different priorities again.
This is why good AV design begins with requirements rather than a product catalogue.
The technology should follow the experience you are trying to create, not the other way around.
2. Assuming that bigger and more expensive means better
There is a natural tendency in technology projects to believe that more capability must equal a better solution.
A bigger display must be better. A more expensive camera must be better. More microphones must be better. The newest AI features must be better.
Sometimes they are.
But not necessarily.
A 98-inch display does not compensate for poor sightlines. An incredibly sophisticated camera cannot solve a room with inadequate lighting. The most advanced microphone system in the world cannot completely overcome fundamentally poor acoustics. And adding technology that nobody needs can actually make a room more complicated rather than more effective.
The objective is not to create the most technologically impressive room.
The objective is to create the most appropriate room for the people using it.
That distinction is particularly important as manufacturers continue to introduce increasingly sophisticated cameras, microphones, AI capabilities and collaboration features. The technology available to businesses is becoming extraordinarily capable, but capability alone does not constitute good design.
The best solution is often the one that gives users everything they need while remaining almost invisible to them.
3. Treating audio as an afterthought
(THIS IS MY PERSONAL 'FAVOURITE' - this happens so often!)
People notice screens.
They notice cameras.
They often don't notice microphones until something goes wrong.
Yet in a hybrid meeting, audio may be the single most important part of the experience.
A remote participant can tolerate a slightly imperfect camera image. They can tolerate a screen that is not quite as large as they would ideally like. What they struggle with is not being able to hear the person speaking.
Poor audio changes the entire dynamic of a meeting. People start repeating themselves. Remote participants interrupt because they cannot tell whether somebody has finished speaking. People lean towards microphones. Conversations become stilted. Participants lose concentration.
This is why professional meeting room design needs to consider acoustics, microphone coverage, speaker positioning, echo cancellation, room size and the physical environment as part of one system.
The microphone should not simply be selected because it has the right number of inputs.
It should be selected because it will capture the people who actually need to be heard.
The speakers should not simply be powerful enough.
They should deliver intelligible audio to the people sitting throughout the room.
And the room itself needs to be considered. Hard surfaces, glass walls, high ceilings and reflective materials can all influence the acoustic environment.
Good audio is not something that can simply be added at the end of a project.
4. Designing the room for the people who are physically present
This is one of the most significant changes created by hybrid working.
Historically, meeting rooms were designed primarily around the people sitting around the table.
Hybrid meetings changed that.
There are now effectively two audiences in the room: the people physically present and the people participating remotely.
Yet it is surprisingly easy to design a room that works beautifully for one group while providing a poor experience for the other.
A camera might show the wrong part of the room. A participant at the end of the table might be outside the ideal microphone pickup area. A display might be positioned perfectly for those sitting directly opposite it but awkwardly for somebody joining remotely.
The remote participant does not experience the room in the same way as the person sitting inside it.
They experience whatever the camera, microphone, speakers and displays tell them.
That means successful hybrid meeting room design has to ask a different question.
Not simply:
"Will the people in this room be able to have a meeting?"
But:
"Will everyone participating in this meeting feel that they are part of the same conversation?"
That is a much higher standard.
And it is one of the reasons professional AV design has become considerably more important as hybrid working has become established.
5. Assuming that IT and AV are the same discipline
Meeting rooms sit directly between IT and AV, which can make responsibility surprisingly difficult to define.
The IT team quite reasonably owns the network, security, identity, user accounts, device management and collaboration platforms.
But a meeting room is also a physical environment.
It has acoustics. It has sightlines. It has lighting. It has microphone coverage. It has camera positioning. It has displays, speakers, control interfaces and often sophisticated signal processing.
Neither discipline can deliver the complete solution independently.
This is why the question should not really be whether IT or AV should own the meeting room.
The better question is:
How should IT and AV work together to deliver it?
The most successful deployments establish clear responsibilities between the two.
As we explored in our earlier Insight, [AV Integrator vs Internal IT: Who Should Do What?], meeting rooms sit at the intersection of both disciplines
The AV specialist can focus on room design, AV hardware, integration and user experience, while IT ensures that the resulting environment is secure, connected, supportable and aligned with corporate standards.
When those teams become involved early enough, the distinction becomes an advantage rather than a problem.
When they work in isolation, it can become a source of failure.
We explored this in more detail in our earlier Insight, AV Integrator vs Internal IT: Who Should Do What? The underlying principle remains simple: meeting rooms exist at the intersection of both disciplines, and successful projects recognise that from the beginning.
6. Choosing the technology before understanding the user experience
Another common mistake is to ask what the room should contain before asking what the room should feel like.
That may sound like a subtle distinction, but it is fundamental.
Imagine walking into a meeting room five years from now.
What should happen?
Ideally, you walk in, the system is ready, you join your meeting, everyone can see and hear one another, content sharing is straightforward and the meeting begins.
Nobody should need to know which processor is controlling the room.
Nobody should need to understand how the digital signal processing works.
Nobody should care which manufacturer made the camera.
The technology has done its job when the user does not have to think about it.
This is the difference between designing a collection of equipment and designing an experience.
Not the other way around.
7. Assuming that "it works" means that the project has succeeded
This may be the most dangerous phrase in AV:
"It works."
Technically, that can mean almost anything.
The screen displays an image.
The camera turns on.
The microphone produces audio.
Teams launches.
The meeting can be joined.
The project is therefore declared successful.
But what happens when twelve people are sitting around the table? Can everyone be heard? Can everyone see the content? Can the camera frame the participants correctly?
Can somebody join a meeting without assistance? Can an external guest connect without creating a technical drama? Does the room work consistently every day?
There is an enormous difference between functional and effective.
A room can pass a technical commissioning test and still frustrate its users every day.
Good AV integration therefore has to go beyond proving that individual components operate.
The real test is whether the entire system performs as intended in the real environment, with real users, under realistic conditions.
The question should not be:
"Does it work?"
It should be:
"Does it work the way people need it to work?"
That is a much more meaningful measure of success.
8. Treating every meeting room as a one-off project
For a single office with one meeting room, it can be tempting to design that room entirely independently.
But as soon as an organisation operates multiple meeting spaces, inconsistency becomes a problem.
One room uses one interface. Another uses a different camera. A third has a completely different way of sharing content. One room has Teams Rooms. Another relies on BYOD.
Some users know how to operate one space but not another.
The technology may all work individually.
The organisation has nevertheless created unnecessary complexity.
Standardisation does not mean making every room identical.
It means creating a consistent philosophy around room types, user interfaces, technology choices, support and operation.
A small huddle room should not necessarily look like a boardroom.
But users should understand how both rooms work.
This becomes even more important for organisations with multiple offices or distributed teams. A consistent experience reduces training requirements, simplifies support and makes it much easier to manage the technology estate over time.
Good AV design therefore considers not only the room being built today, but the rooms that may need to be built tomorrow.
9. Forgetting that the project does not end when the installer leaves
There is another assumption that causes problems: that AV is a project rather than an ongoing service.
A meeting room is installed.
The equipment is commissioned.
Everyone signs it off.
The project is complete.
Except that the organisation will probably use that room for years.
During that time, firmware will change. Collaboration platforms will evolve. Microsoft Teams will introduce new functionality. User requirements will change. Equipment will eventually reach the end of its useful life. People will join and leave the organisation. Rooms will be reconfigured. Problems will emerge that nobody could have predicted during installation.
Monitoring, preventative maintenance, remote support, asset management and lifecycle planning can all play an important role in keeping collaboration environments reliable.
The value of professional AV integration therefore extends beyond the initial installation.
A well-designed room should not simply work on day one.
It should continue to work as the organisation changes.
10. Buying products rather than buying an outcome
Ultimately, almost every mistake above comes back to one fundamental issue.
Businesses often buy AV as a collection of products.
A display.
A camera.
A microphone.
A Teams Rooms system.
A control panel.
A speaker.
Each product can be perfectly good.
But a meeting room is not the sum of its products.
It is the interaction between them.
And beyond that, it is the interaction between the technology and the people using it.
That is why two organisations can purchase similar equipment and end up with completely different experiences.
One has designed the room around an outcome.
The other has assembled a collection of devices.
The difference may not be obvious when looking at a quotation. It becomes very obvious at 9:02 on a Monday morning when twelve people walk into the room and expect a meeting to start.
The real cost of getting AV design wrong
There is also a financial argument here that is often overlooked.
Poor AV design does not necessarily reveal itself as a large, obvious invoice.
Instead, the cost appears in hundreds of small moments.
Five minutes lost at the beginning of a meeting.
An employee calling IT because they cannot connect.
A customer waiting while somebody troubleshoots the camera.
A remote participant missing part of a conversation.
An executive avoiding a particular meeting room because "the technology never works".
An IT team repeatedly dealing with issues that should have been solved during design.
An organisation replacing equipment that was never really the right solution in the first place.
Individually, these incidents can appear insignificant.
Collectively, they represent a substantial cost.
And that is before considering the reputational impact of presenting a poor technology experience to customers, partners or employees.
The cheapest AV project is therefore not necessarily the one with the lowest equipment cost.
Sometimes the most expensive project is the one that has to be redesigned six months later.
Good AV design is about removing friction
The best meeting rooms are often surprisingly unremarkable.
People walk in.
They sit down.
They start the meeting.
The remote participants can hear and see everyone.
Content appears where it should.
Nobody asks where the HDMI cable is.
Nobody needs to call IT.
Nobody talks about the technology.
That might sound like a failure to demonstrate what the technology can do.
In reality, it is the opposite.
The technology has become so well designed and integrated that it has disappeared into the experience.
This is what businesses should ultimately be paying for.
Not simply a camera with better specifications.
Not simply a bigger display.
Not simply a collection of professional AV products.
They are paying for less friction.
Less wasted time. Less uncertainty. Less technical support. Less frustration. Less inconsistency.
And more importantly, they are creating an environment in which people can concentrate on the reason they came into the meeting in the first place.
The role of an AV integrator is therefore changing
This is ultimately where the role of an AV integrator becomes important. The integrator's job isn't simply to install the equipment; it is to bring together the physical environment, technology, collaboration platform and user experience into a system that works as a whole. We explore what that role actually involves in our earlier Insight, [What Does an AV Integrator Do — and Should Your Business Use One?].
So, what should businesses do differently?
The answer is not to spend more money on AV.
It is to spend more time thinking about what the AV needs to achieve.
Start with the people.
Understand the meetings.
Understand the room.
Understand the wider technology environment.
Define the experience you want users to have.
Then select the technology that delivers that experience.
Bring IT, facilities, workplace teams and AV specialists into the conversation early enough that they can influence the design rather than simply react to it.
And think beyond installation. Consider support, monitoring, standardisation, lifecycle management and future requirements from the beginning.
This approach may not always result in the most technologically complex meeting room.
It should result in something much more valuable.
A meeting room that people actually want to use.
The difference between good equipment and good AV
Firstly.. There is nothing wrong with buying good AV equipment.
In fact, the quality, reliability and capabilities of modern AV technology are better than they have ever been.
But equipment is only one part of the equation.
A great camera in the wrong position is still the wrong camera solution.
A powerful microphone in an acoustically unsuitable room is not a good audio design.
A huge display with poor sightlines is not a great presentation environment.
A perfectly configured Microsoft Teams Rooms system in a poorly designed room will not suddenly create a great meeting experience.
And a collection of individually excellent products does not automatically become an excellent collaboration environment.
The real skill lies in bringing everything together.
Good AV equipment is about what the technology can do.
Great AV design is about what people can achieve with it.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important as organisations invest more heavily in workplace technology.
The future of workplace AV is not going to be defined simply by which business has the newest camera, the biggest screen or the latest AI feature.
It will be defined by which organisations understand that technology is there to serve people — and design their environments accordingly.
Because when good AV equipment fails, the problem is often not the equipment at all.
It is the design around it.
About Collab AV
At Collab AV, we believe great meeting spaces begin with understanding how people actually work. We design, supply, install and support professional AV and collaboration environments for organisations across the UK, working alongside internal IT teams to create technology that is reliable, intuitive and built around the needs of the people using it.
Whether you are designing a single meeting room, standardising collaboration spaces across multiple sites or reviewing an existing AV estate, the starting point should always be the same:
What experience are we trying to create?
Everything else follows from there.
If your organisation is planning a new meeting room, upgrading an existing space or trying to understand why rooms that "should work" continue to create problems, the starting point shouldn't be another equipment catalogue. It should be a conversation about what you need the space to achieve. That's the approach we take at Collab AV through our [AV Integration] services — designing the technology around the people, the room and the outcome, rather than simply filling the room with equipment.
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