Collaboration Meeting Rooms
Collaboration meeting rooms are meetings in the cloud, joined by participants all over the world using their preferred video or audio device or room of choice. This product is an attempt at humanizing communication between people in the workplace and taking collaboration to the next level.
Problem Statement
- Create a unified meeting experience across all collaboration suite of products sold by Cisco.
- Introduce immersive, face-to-face collaboration to WebEx meetings
- Business Need : Boost Video Adoption.
Challenges
- Existing products are used by millions of users worldwide who have different mental models.
- Limited access to the actual end users. Communication is limited to customers who buy the product for the actual end users.
- Huge enterprise customers like GE, BofA, Boeing etc who are not open to of smaller, agile updates and deployments.
My Role
Lead UI designer on the Cisco WebEx meetings team.
Collaborated closely with the UX designers on the Video Devices team in Oslo, Norway. Conducted design concept review and delivery with development teams and product managers.
Research and Discovery
STEP 1 : As part of this phase i met with customers, professional services, and customer support managers.
STEP 2 : User Journey Mapping - With all this data i partnered with our user researcher to come up with the user journeys for 2 key personas in meetings; Hosts and Attendees.
STEP 3 : Insights from User Journey Mapping
1. The baseline experience our customers were expecting from the product was not being met by the meeting service.
2. Pain Points which users encountered using the current product.
3. Innovation opportunities which would delight our customers and make the experience productive and seamless.
CONCEPTUALIZATION and detail Designs
brainstorming and sketching
One of the key finding from the discovery process was to make video an integral part of WebEx online meetings. This would allow the users to slowly shift from a audio+screen share web conferencing experience to a face to face video conferencing experience.
Sketches showing the smart layout. Upto 6 videos can be accommodated on the screen.
Sketches showing the active speaker layout with and without document sharing
User flows and Wireframes
Initial design deliverable : ACTIVE SPEAKER LAYOUT
Below are the wireframes showing the Active Speaker Layout. In these layouts, the user who is actively speaking in the meeting gets the maximum real estate.
Video PROTOTYPES
Below are the prototypes showing some of the key tasks in a meeting
Participants Joining the meeting
Documents being shared in the meeting
Participants leaving the meeting
Final design deliverable : SMART VIDEO LAYOUTS
After several rounds of testing the initial concept (Active video layout), based on some new insights gathered, we redesigned the layouts to smart layouts. Insights listed below :
- Smart layouts are better for smaller meetings with 5 participants or less.
- Active/Auto layout is better for larger meetings. It is good for presentations, training or 1 person doing most of the talking.
- 4:3 aspect ratio is the most preferred for the video on desktop and 16:9 oblong for the video device screens.
- Negative reaction to a large active speaker as it does not promote team equality : too intimate and wastes space.
What is the problem we are trying to solve ?
1. Unify the waiting/lobby experience for attendees joining personal room meetings.
2. Improve communication among participants waiting in the lobby and with the host.
Disjoint Experience
Ideation and scenario exploration
WIREFRAMES
Below is the waiting experience design which tries to unify the experience across desktop, mobile , IP phone and TP video devices. This unified is optimized for the device used to join the meeting.
