My role:
UX/UI Designer
Timeline:
Feb- June 2022
Background
Zoom is an online video communications platform with both free and paid options. The Software as a Service (SaaS) product allows users to video conference remotely using cloud-based computing.
The communications technology company headquarters is in California and was founded in 2011.
The problem
Users claimed that scheduling a call and sending invites were two of the most difficult and challenging to manage while using Zoom. They are also two of Zooms main features.
"I know how to use Zoom now, but I had to learn how to schedule a call. I also had to teach my family over lockdown, it could definitely be more intuitive"
Research Question
How might we make scheduling, inviting and joining a Zoom call easier for a first time user?
Outcome
Enjoyment while using increased by 13%
Ease of navigation increased by 22%
And a 31% decrease in complexity
As well as this participants were asked to complete four tasks during user testing of the current and new design. The tasks timed during user testing of the final iteration of the new design were completed at a significantly reduced time. This showing that it is more intuitive to a user that was not familiar with how Zoom works.
Process
This project followed the double diamond approach, it features two diamonds, the first focused on research - discovering problems and defining insights.
Once the specific problem has been identified the second phase can start. The second diamond focused on the design - developing and ideating prototypes to be tested resulting in a deliverable.
DISCOVER
At this point of the project I wanted to discover what problems people where facing while using Zoom and where the opportunities lay to improve the experience for the user. I started the discovery by doing an analysis of problems in the most recent 100 reviews on Trust pilot.
This then informed the conditional logic survey that was carried out. A conditional logic survey was used to gather data on two types of user. User A being the person that doesn't use zoom regularly and B the person that uses Zoom on a regular basis.
Following the survey, 5 none Zoom users were asked to complete four tasks to highlight usability problems that hadn't already been learnt by a user.
Survey key findings
User testing of the current Zoom, Key findings
All participants felt there was a lot of information on show for scheduling a call : Meeting id, Security and Cameras on/off. This meant completing the task took longer to achieve than necessary.
The strong emphasis on meeting ID made participants think they needed it.
100% of users clicked save without understanding that they could invite through picking a calendar.
User Quote:
“I don’t know what Calendar Aaron uses”
100% of participants said they couldn’t tell if they had successfully copied the invite link to invite participants.
75% of users said the open button on the invite screen surprised them when it opened a calendar, it did not indicate that this is what was going to happen.
All users said they would have liked the option to see if they were joining with audio and video before joining the call, as well as been able to access backgrounds and filters.
User Quote:
“Launch meeting browser opening is a bit useless, id prefer if it just launched”
DEFINE
Once key finding from the research had been identified, how might we... statements were acknowledged for investigation.
The research also helped to create the Proto-persona "Orla Daly" to help establish the goals, needs and frustrations of a Zoom user. "Orla Daly" helped with creating empathy for a real struggling user and highlighted the opportunities to improve the experience at each touch point of scheduling, inviting and joining a zoom call.
Problem statement
How might we make scheduling, inviting and joining a Zoom call easier for a first time user?
Break down of the statement:
How might we make scheduling a call more straight forward and quick to do for people that don’t require Meeting ID’s and security?
How might we make Inviting people to a scheduled meeting clearer within the app?
How might we make Inviting more intuitive to understand?
How might we give the user more control joining a meeting?
Proto-Persona
Proto-Persona Orla
Experience Maps
As-Is Experience Map
To-Be Experience Map
DEVELOP/ DELIVER
Having establish how to improve the experience at each touch point: scheduling, inviting and joining a Zoom call, it was time to develop and test informed iterations. Iteration one remained quite similar to the current zoom design and feedback from user testing discovered it was still more complex than it needed to be.
There was four design Iterations in total.
Iterations of Zoom
User Testing Tasks:
Schedule a call and Invite someone through your calendar
Start a call now and copy and your call link
Start a call now and invite someone by email
Join a call with your audio off and camera on
Schedule a call and Invite someone through your calendar
Before
After
Start a call now and Invite someone
Before
After
Join a call
Before
After
Validation
A post task questionnaire that used some questions from the "System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire" was used to measure the success and improvement between the existing software (Zoom) with the new redesigned (Zoom). Participants where asked to rate their answers 1 to 5 on a Likert scale,1 being "strongly disagree" and 5 being "strongly agree".
Each answer was giving the following percentages:
Strongly disagree = 1 (0/100 in calculations)
Disagree = 2 (25/100 in calculations)
Neutral = 3 (50/100 in calculations)
Agree = 4 (75/100 in calculations)
Strongly agree = 5 (100/100 in calculations)
These where then added up and divided by the number of participance that answered each SUS question to achieve an average agreement percentage.
The results are as follows:
Before and after System Usability questionnaire
*Please refer to point 4 in "Things I learnt" found at the bottom of the case study, where you will find how I would conduct a System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire differently next time.
The average time to complete each task was also measured when testing the current Zoom design, during testing of iteration two and the final version. The table below shows the average time each task took to complete showing a reduced time for each task in the final Iteration. This shows the new redesigned Zoom is more intuitive for the average new user.
Before and After times to complete tasks on Zoom
Conclusion
Both the System Usability Scale and timed tasks showed there were improvements made to the design making scheduling, inviting and joining a Zoom call easier for a first time user.
Enjoyment while using increased by 13%
Ease of navigation increased by 22%
Ease of use increased by 26%
And a 31% decrease in complexity
The 4 tasks timed during user testing of the final iteration (new design) were completed at a significant reduced time. Showing that it is more intuitive to a user that was not familiar with how Zoom works.
This Validates............
Things I learnt
1) The importance of UX in a user survey, using checkboxes when you want users to pick multiple answers and radio buttons when you want the user to only pick one answer.
This was also extended into form design research, that informed the new design of scheduling a call.
2) It's important to review questions and analysing "will I be able to act on the possible findings I get from the answers". Users time is valuable and they get annoyed by long surveys (they may say no next time) so it's important to ask relevant questions that will inform the solution.
3) To give all screens a descriptive label so external people can get on board quickly without getting confused by the order in which the screens go in.
4) How to use and calculate System Usability Scale (SUS) Properly. The questions should follow having 5 even numbers framed positively and 5 odd numbers framed negatively to get an accurate response form each user. However I only asked 9 question with only one of them being framed negatively. Moving forward I will know the importance of this for when it comes to calculating as it is not a percentage.
Example scoring:
Odd = (4+5+3+4+3) = 19 – 5 = 14
Even = (2+1+3+1+1) = 25 – 8 = 17
SUS Score: (14+17) x 2.5 = 77.5
Odd = (4+5+3+4+3) = 19 – 5 = 14
Even = (2+1+3+1+1) = 25 – 8 = 17
SUS Score: (14+17) x 2.5 = 77.5
