DEV Community: Masaki Iino

Where Should I Look? 3 Small UX Problems in Remote Demos

Masaki Iino — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:57:31 +0000

In remote software demos, the biggest problem is not always the product itself.

Sometimes the audience simply doesn’t know where to look.

A button may be visible. A setting may already be on screen. The presenter may be explaining everything correctly.

But if attention isn’t directed clearly, people can still get lost.

After doing a lot of screen sharing and software demos, I kept noticing the same small UX problems.

1. The cursor is visible, but not necessarily noticeable

When you're presenting your own screen, you always know where your pointer is.

The audience doesn’t.

On a large monitor, a compressed video call, or a busy application UI, the pointer can easily disappear visually even though it is technically visible.

This becomes especially obvious when you say something like:

“If you look over here…”

You know exactly what “here” means.

The audience may need another second or two to find it.

That delay sounds minor, but during a demo it can happen again and again.

A presenter moves on to the next step while part of the audience is still trying to locate the previous one.

2. Moving the pointer is not the same as directing attention

A common workaround is to move the mouse around whatever you want people to notice.

I’ve done this many times myself.

Circle the button with the cursor.

Move back and forth over a chart.

Quickly point between two settings.

It works, but it also adds visual noise.

Eventually I realized there are really two different actions happening:

Navigation — using the mouse to operate the software.

Attention — telling the audience where to look.

During a demo, those aren’t always the same thing.

Sometimes I don’t want to click anything or change the interface.

I just want to say:

Look here.

3. Highlighting something can interrupt the demo

There are plenty of powerful screen annotation tools available.

They make sense when you want to draw arrows, write notes, add shapes, or explain something in detail.

But during a live product demo, switching into a drawing mode can sometimes be more than I need.

The workflow becomes:

stop operating the product → choose an annotation tool → highlight something → clear it → return to the demo.

That is only a few steps, but it changes the rhythm of the presentation.

For many situations, I wanted something much simpler.

A visual cue that appears when I need it and then gets out of the way.

What I wanted instead

I eventually wrote down a few constraints for myself:

appear only when I deliberately ask for it
disappear automatically
require almost no thought while presenting
avoid switching into a separate drawing workflow
let me continue operating the software normally

That led me to build a small utility called Pointer Cue.

The idea is deliberately simple.

On a Mac, pressing Command highlights the pointer with a temporary ring. On Windows, the equivalent action uses Control.

Hold the key and drag, and you can temporarily outline an area of the screen.

The Mac version also has a Focus Cue that can make the active window stand out when the rest of the desktop is distracting.

There are no drawing palettes to open first and no annotation mode I need to remember to exit.

I can keep demonstrating the software and add a visual cue only when the audience needs one.

That distinction turned out to matter more to me than adding more annotation features.

Pointer Cue isn’t intended to replace a full screen drawing or presentation tool.

It is designed for a narrower problem:

helping people know where to look without interrupting the flow of a demo.

If you're curious, I put more details and a free version here:

https://lp.toybird.com/pointer-cue/

But I’m more interested in the broader question.

When you're doing a remote demo or screen share, how do you make sure people know where to look without interrupting what you're presenting?

Mouse Highlighting Isn’t New. I Wanted One Tuned for Remote Demos

Masaki Iino — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:33:51 +0000

Mouse highlighting is nothing new.

Tools for making the cursor easier to see or annotating an area of the screen have been around for years. I had already been using some of them myself, including Simple Mouse Locator and ScreenBrush.

They are useful tools. But after doing a lot of software demos and screen sharing, I kept wanting a slightly different combination:

Tuned specifically for remote demos
Intuitive enough that using it wouldn’t interrupt the demo itself

That is why I built Pointer Cue.

The friction wasn’t drawing — it was switching modes

A pointer highlight works well when I simply want to say:

“Look here.”

But during software demos, I often need to indicate something larger: a group of settings, a toolbar, a chart, or an entire panel.

Full annotation tools already handle this very well. The friction for me was the workflow.

To highlight an area, I would enter drawing mode, mark the area, explain it, exit drawing mode, and then continue operating the application.

None of those steps are difficult. But during a live demo, even one extra mode switch can break the rhythm.

What I wanted was much simpler:

When I want to indicate an area, I want to do it immediately — and then keep going.

So Pointer Cue lets me highlight an area without treating it as a separate annotation workflow.

It is a small difference, but it changes how the tool feels during an actual demo. I can focus on what I am explaining rather than thinking about which mode the presentation tool is currently in.

Tuned for what remote viewers actually see

The other thing I wanted to change was the pointer highlight itself.

Many mouse-highlighting tools feel fast and responsive when viewed directly on your own display.

But during a remote meeting, the audience is seeing a shared-screen video affected by compression, frame rate, network conditions, and often a much smaller viewing area.

I found that an effect that looked obvious on my own screen could be surprisingly easy for someone on the other side of the meeting to miss.

So I deliberately tuned Pointer Cue’s highlight to move a little more slowly. It slightly follows the pointer instead of behaving like an instantaneous effect.

That was intentional.

I wasn’t optimizing for the fastest-looking animation on my own Mac. I was optimizing for a different question:

Can the person watching my shared screen actually notice where I want them to look?

That is the main reason I think of Pointer Cue not simply as a mouse highlighter, but as a visual aid tuned for remote software demos.

The latest step: Active Window Highlight

More recently, I noticed another issue.

Even when the cursor is easy to see, a demo can involve several windows at once. I might move from a browser to a desktop application, compare two windows, and then return to the first one.

As the presenter, that context is obvious. For the audience, it can take a moment to understand:

“Which window should I be looking at now?”

So the latest version of Pointer Cue adds Active Window Highlight.

When I change focus, Pointer Cue visually emphasizes the window I am actually using.

Again, I wanted this to require no extra presentation action. I switch windows because that is already part of the demo. Pointer Cue simply makes that change easier for the audience to follow.

A deliberately narrow tool

Pointer Cue is not intended to replace full annotation or whiteboard tools.

If I need arrows, freehand drawing, text, shapes, or persistent annotations, those tools are a better fit.

Pointer Cue is intentionally narrower.

I wanted a lightweight tool for the moments when I simply need to help an audience follow a software demo: make the pointer easier to see, indicate an area without switching modes, and make the active window obvious.

The common idea behind all of those features is simple:

Visual guidance should follow the demo — the demo shouldn’t have to stop for the visual guidance.

Try it in a real remote demo

Pointer Cue is available for both Mac and Windows.

👉 See Pointer Cue and download it here

For a limited time, I’m also offering a free macOS version directly from the website.

If you regularly give product demos, customer presentations, training sessions, tutorials, or share software in remote meetings, I’d love for you to try it in a real session.

And if you regularly demo software, I’m curious:

What small interaction in a presentation tool most often interrupts the flow of your demo?