Team

2 passionate designers

Role

UX/UI Design / project management

Tools

Figma / Adobe Illustrator

Duration

2 months, Sep-Nov 2022

Reflections

One month after our project was done, Zoom surprisingly released the concept of ZOOMTOPIA with a set of new features including Calendar and Mail, which confirmed our design decisions from the high level.


Of course, a passionate project won’t be so perfect to cover all and the future of work will be keep evolving. Here are a few thoughts I have as next steps:

⚙️ Increase the synergies across devices to further extend the possibilities.

🧩 Enhance the multi-modality in collaboration scenarios for inclusiveness

🤖 Integrate AI functions into online office platform, such as automated meeting summary and translated captions.

/ THINk Further

What would be the future of work?

When the project finished within our preset timeline, we exchanged ideas on the our gains and the key factors contributing to a smooth collaboration.

🔭 Keep a clear scope

Since this is a passionate project, the biggest challenge was to identify the design scope as well as define final deliverables. Even though without the real business metrics, we set principles based on preliminary research and kept focusing on MVPs.

♿️ Be a better designer from accessible design

During the high fidelity prototype validation process, we occurred to test with a user with chromatic weakness, and then we revised all the designed screens. When the consideration of accessibility is maintained from the early stage of design, the accessibility specification problems caused by negligence can be avoided later on.

/ Take aways

What I have learnt

New annotation tool bar

  • Easily recognized and well categorized tool bar

manage annotation notes with pinned screenshots

  • Take screenshot to reserve temporarily on screen and automatically save in temp folders.

  • Screenshots in the folder can be pinned again, or managed easily such as multi-selected and saved/deleted.

Final Solutions

03

Improved Screen sharing Collaboration

Lucas Garcia

Senior Project manager

I want to compare different stuff at the same time when sharing my screen...

Virtualized the Set-up

  • 3 ways to assign attendees:

    drag and drop for simple choose;

    multi select for groups;

    shuffling for random assignment

Manage and Monitor

Multi - group Talking

  • Switch between breakout rooms during a session to improve flexibility.

  • Quickly know the status of each room and preview room details before joining.

Group Discussion

  • Introduce chat channels, including general, room and direct ones to provide a more seamless experience.

  • Live discussion on screen: no missing information

  • Switch between main screen & room screen

Final Solutions

02

Enhanced breakout rooms experience

Lucas Garcia

Senior Project manager

I am going to host a workshop with colleagues from multiple service lines.

Intuitive

scheduling system

  • A detailed panel to know team availability at a glance

  • Choose the best time by clicking the auto-suggested time blocks.

Efficient

information collection

  • Show all upcoming and historical meetings with improved hierarchy, and gather all the information as needed.

  • Seamless integration with calendar service from scheduling meetings, to access recordings, and notes and attachments.

synthesized

management platform

  • A synthesized solution from pre-meeting scheduling to historical meeting management

  • Reduce the wasted time between zoom and other tools.

Final Solutions

01

Integrated Meeting Management

Lucas Garcia

Senior Project manager

Hello Monday, let’s do a weekly catch-up and quickly schedule for a few meetings.

Overview

/ Background

🪫 Remote working has become the new norm.

As remote working has been shifting the work pattern since pandemic, Zoom emerged as a popular video meeting centric collaboration platform to enable remote work patterns.

⬆️ Time for managing systems and tools =

⬇️ Productive remote collaboration.

We are heavy Zoom users for its high quality video conferencing experience with collaboration tools. Starting from our own experience in remote work and digging into the facts, we identified great opportunities to drive collaboration to the next level.

01

Streamlined workflow from scheduling to accessing meetings and follow up

02

Smarter process in setting up group discussions and monitoring participants' activities

03

Improved experience to further compare, and preserve collaboration results when sharing screens.

Challenge

How to improve remote collaboration experience in zoom to boost productivity in daily work flow?

I worked with another designer for 2 months to drive this project from 0 to 1, and we developed a highly efficient collaborative mode. During which, my main areas of contribution include:

🗓️ Time management: monitor the process, and ensure the output quality.

📊 Exploring and synthesizing insight: from collecting resources to insight conclusion.

🔧 Design iterations: always think and explore further for final design.

🎨 Infographic design: synthesize research to easily understandable visualizations.

/ Role

What is my contribution?

👩‍💻 Reduce the time wasted in shifting between applications

⏱ Save more time for remote collaboration during virtual meetings

As a passion project, we were not able to collect adequate stats from user testings. While from the beginning of the design process, we agreed on these 2 key metrics to measure the success of our solutions.

/ Intended outcome

How to measure the success?

Analysis

Identify macro trend

Define target group

Identify user needs

Frame problem

Ideation

Brainstorm solutions

Define MVPs

Design

Iterate solutions

Validate with users

Reflection

Think further

Takeaways

/ process

How we got there

Flexibility?

Productivity?

/ Solution Brief

An enhanced Zoom platform with streamlined collaboration workflow and extended scenarios.

Design

/ testings & iterations

We developed low fidelity wireframes and performed testing with 5 users. With confirmed ideas/features from the high level, we developed hifi prototype and conducted usability testing with 15 users.

What are the key findings of testings?

  • Need to improve information hierarchy and readability

  • Need to increase the discoverability for some key features

  • Need to improve Accessibility

How do these results affect iterations?

Several user goals, usability, and interaction issues were further revealed from the testing. Based on feedback from usability testing, we conducted iterations, including user flow, wireframes, and visual presentation.

View Research Process

Analysis

/ Research

What are users suffering from current collaboration scenarios?

02

03

01

Reduced productivity due to 'toggle tax' between zoom and other tools

Hindered collaboration experience

in screen sharing

Difficulty in managing and monitoring multiple group discussions

/ Brainstorming

Based on the previous ideations and considerations for feasibility, we used prioritization matrix to narrow down the redesign MVP.

Reduced productivity due to 'toggle tax' between tools.

Difficulty in managing and monitoring group discussions.

Hindered collaboration experience in screen sharing.

1

Built-in calendar complete the scheduling workflows with meetings

6

Simplified room set-up process for better accessibility

10

More collaboration tools

2

Unified meeting organization system for accessing related materials

7

Virtualized group discussion monitor panel

8

Easily switching between main session and each groups

11

Intuitive way to preserve collaborative annotation result

3

More easily to manage team availability

9

Virtualized room space and background with built-in environments

12

Improve attendees' real-time reactions

4

In-meeting tools for team collaboration

13

Enable sharing multiple screens simultaneously

5

Appointment booking feature for invitees to select from available times

14

Availability to annotation edit history

10

14

Efforts

Impacts

Big Bets

Low-hanging Fruits

Worth Considering

Trade offs

1

2

5

3

4

9

7

8

6

13

11

12

/ Prioritization Metrics

Based on the previous ideations and considerations for feasibility, we used prioritization matrix to narrow down the redesign MVP.

  • whether align with targeted business goals

  • both business values and user values are under consideration

  • balance developer hours, costs of external services

  • how the added/ redesigned feature impact with other parts of Zoom (may cause additional efforts)

Prioritize Criteria

HMW

How might we help users decrease the cognitive load of managing systems and adjust to tools?

Introducing Integrated Meeting Management

Improving Screen Sharing Collaboration

Enhancing Breakout Rooms Experience

/ Results

After all the research and ideations, we thought there were 3 main opportunities accordingly.

01

02

03

base on version 5.12.0 (11129)

09/22 2022

Redesign

The redesign of Zoom desktop App looks for improving the team collaboration experience within the context of remote working.

View Research Process