Redesign the Microsoft 365 What’s New feature to increase user awareness and engagement in a collaboration with the Microsoft team.
Jan 2022 to Jun 2022
UI/UX Designer, Usability Researcher, Product Manager (Prototype phase)
Desktop Interface Design, Hub System Design, Micro-interaction
THE SOLUTION
We went through 5 design phases in 6 months, 15 interviews with users and non users of What’s New, 190 survey responses, and innumerable discussion and ideation. All of these brought us to create two separated design, hub interface & in-app interface to solve the problem of low user awareness and engagement about What' New feature in Microsoft 365.
Interactive PrototypeHere's the motivation
The What’s New feature is an integral “updates and news” feature in Microsoft 365 applications and we wish to learn more about it, including the “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why” of its usage. We are working closely with Microsoft to examine and evaluate the current What’s New to gear up for an overhaul. This comprises learning what the current model does well, and what can be done to improve said model in terms of user engagement and expectations.
I used Grounded Theory to generate code from transcript and use Comparative Code Analysis to compared by question, participant demographics, feature usage.
Based on the research and discussion, we decided to achieve these goals on two design.
I'm responsible for In-App design and the management of Hub design. We tried multiple variations of our design sketch and moved the best of them to the next level.
First of all, our major problem was most users didn't even know this feature exist because it was too hidden. I decided to make the action button to be obvious but not overpowering, a floating button satisfy both obvious and fancy.
I first decided to have a centrailized floating button that has all functions, and users could go to the Hub for further setting and needs. However I felt it's kind of overwhleming to have so many content in one place, therefore I made a another sketch, Plan 2. After the comparison, plan 2 got more votes. Plan 2 is more Microsoft style, it's more clear and concise compared to plan 1.
While turning to hifi stage, I built 3 versions of pop-up window, text button style has the best effect.
Action menu was polished 3 times with peer critique and users feedback.
Due to the time constraint, we were unable to get the hub tested by users, but we followed a professional design system to create a satisfying experience. We'd like to get a usability test in a further stage.
Here's the final clickble prototype, I hope you enjoy this!
You can click around to see what happend in the hub
or
Open Word/Power Point to go to the In-App screen.
