Company

Zoom

(Personal project)

Year

2020

Type

Software

Skills

UX Research

Product Design

Zoom: Understanding why there is a huge drop-off in using instant meetings

Context

To do this project, I imagined that based on the data we realized that the use of instant meetings was decreasing, so the idea of this project is to understand why, and to find a design solution to solve the problem.

Design process

For this project, I first set up a research plan to understand the reasons for the problem, which I studied, then based on these results I designed a solution, which I had tested and delivered.

Discovery

Hypothesis

In general, before starting a research topic, I first define hypothesises to know what I’m going to look for. Hypothesises can be defined in previous research or discussing with the Product Manager.

It’s hard to find the meeting sharing link when I create an instant meeting so I use another tool to create instant meetings.

Research approach:

Define users

We consider that the usage of Zoom is not the same if you work in a small or large company, and if you are a manager or team member. Big companies seem to have more tools and Zoom needs to integrate them into that ecosystem (Slack, Google Calendar, etc.). In Small companies, everyone knows each other which makes it easy to communicate. But both sizes of companies can have external chats and had to adapt to remote work relative to the current COVID situation.

It’s interesting to have the extremes so that the design meets the needs of both. I exclude mid-size companies considering that they will have the same problems as the small and/or big ones. Here is the user panel with whom to exchange: (I met only 1 user for this exercise)

User sample

5 users using as a daily basis Zoom to do instant meetings

3 from big companies (more than 500 employees)

1 manager

2 team members

2 from small companies (between 20 and 50 employees)

1 manager

1 team member

Incentives

30 € per user, so for 5 users, the budget will be 150€.

Research plan

1st step: quick interview

The purpose of this interview is to understand how users use Zoom on a daily basis at work, particularly in the use of instant meetings. It will also serve to better contextualize the further user test.

2nd step: user test

The user test allows me to deepen the research on a particular and real context and to observe how the user uses the instant meeting function and to understand the current problems.

Some questions of the interview

Tools to communicate

How do you communicate inside your team/company?

What tools do you use? Why those tools?

Within all these tools what is the purpose of Zoom?

How frequently do you do instant meetings and why?

What other tool do you use in your daily work in order to communicate?

Do you do remote meetings only with your colleagues or with people outside the company?

Instant meeting creation flow

How do you set up instant meetings?

Do you also use Slack or any other tool to do instant meetings?

Using Zoom, do you always start a meeting from the Zoom interface? From which tool do you also start a meeting?

Meeting settings

In general, why do you need to create an instant meeting on Zoom?

Do you create scheduled meetings also? How do you do?

What do you need when creating a meeting?

Do you know the settings for creating a meeting?

Which ones are important to you?

Which ones do you understand/don’t understand?

Do you use them all?

Do you change the settings according to the people you are going to invite?

Sharing the meeting

How big is the team you are working with?

With whom do you do instant meetings?

How do you share a meeting in general?

How do you want to share a meeting?

Do you prefer to share a link or invite people from the Zoom interface?

What did I learn from the user research?

The user :

Charles D works in a company with offices abroad. His team is composed of 6 people based in 4 countries, and they communicate on a daily basis to work. He usually communicates via Slack, and has a channel with his team. He uses Google Calendar to create meetings, and uses Zoom for video conferencing.

The meeting sharing link is difficult to find at the moment

During the user test I did, the user instinctively clicks on “new meeting” each time because he wants to create an instant meeting, but can’t find the share link. He first goes to “guests”, tries to find the link, and ends up leaving the meeting to create a new scheduled meeting. He then has to configure all the settings for the meeting, choose a date close to the current time so that it can be accessed quickly. The meeting is then created in Google Calendar, where he finds the link to share. What a mess!

Scheduled meetings are created via Google Calendar, instant meeting from Zoom.

When a user creates a meeting from Google Calendar, it’s easy to share the link of the meeting because Zoom is included in the google ecosystem, so they just create an event and invite people, the link is automatically added to the meeting.

When users want to create an instant meeting, they do it in general from Zoom directly.

In general there are always the same persons in the meetings

The user works in general with the same persons, those from his team. When he has to have a meeting, it’s with them.

“All I care about in creating an instant meeting is being able to launch the meeting and invite people from my team to join.”

– Charles D

Valuable new discovery for further explorations

The configuration parameters are not changed from one meeting to another.

Usually when creating a meeting, even if it is pre-programmed, the parameters are not changed, such as the meeting number, the secret code requested or not, the waiting room, if the participant has to put in his video, etc. Nowadays, all the parameters have to be reprogrammed each time, which wastes time and is annoying. The user would like to be able to set default settings and not have to touch them again.

Define

Insights

The meeting sharing link is difficult to find at the moment.

If you create a meeting, it’s to exchange with other people, it should be the first thing to do!

– When creating an instant meeting, you should have a meeting invitation page.

– Sharing should be able to be done via invitation, or via a link to share.

– Once in the meeting, the share link should be easy to find though.

Scheduled meetings are created via Google Calendar, instant meetings from Zoom.

– Instant meetings in the interface should stay highlighted.

In general, there are always the same persons in the meetings

– When sharing the meeting, the people recently contacted should be highlighted.

The configuration parameters are not changed from one meeting to another.

– Settings are not changed, it should be possible to configure them by default the first time an instant meeting is created, and allow them to be changed later.