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A tale of UX/UI Innovation
to craft connections through the integration of an Ice-Breaker feature in the Zoom web app based on a survey with 10+ participants
Problem Statement
As a student, I often have online classes on Zoom. I often see the first 10 minutes of the lecture go by deciding on an ice-breaker followed by doing an ice-breaker on Zoom which again takes time, during Zoom calls, furthermore, from a batch of 60 students, mostly only 10 or 15 students took part in those activities, so when my professor asked in frustration for a better way, I thought of leveraging my UIUX skills to solve it and redesign zoom app experience.
Challenge:
Enhance Zoom web app, by adding ice-breaker feature
Tools used:
Figma, Google Forms, UseBerry, and Canva
Team:
3 (1 Product Desginer, 2 Product manager)
Time:
Dec 2023- Present
Existing Challenges
So, in the Zoom app right now, people have trouble getting to know each other during online meetings – remote work, talking to clients, or virtual classes. Even students find it tricky to team up. We saw this gap and decided to amp up Zoom. Now, it's got features dealing with the awkwardness and boosting how we connect virtually—making online chats way smoother and more fun!
My Role
As a product designer and UX researcher for this project, my main focus was creating high-fidelity clickable frames that serve as the visual and interactive blueprints for digital products. I was responsible for understanding user needs through research and feedback, and refining designs to ensure usability and satisfaction. Meanwhile, my team handles business requirements and metrics analysis. This division allows us to streamline our workflow, ensuring our efforts align with user expectations and business objectives.
Design Thinking approach
After understanding the need for this feature in the existing Zoom meeting and the web app, I decided to use the design thinking method to develop the case study, and better break down the problem to understand the solution of it.
Understanding the user
Understanding the Problem
Sketching the ideas
Building the prototype
Testing the final app
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Conducted user interviews
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Did Personna building
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Built Customer Journey
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Analyzed the data collected
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Competitors analysis
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Defined Goals
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Brainstormed the ideas
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Did Feature prioritization
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Worked on lo-fi frames
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Built Prototype
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Conducted Usability testing
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Feedback and iteration
User Interviews
The user interviews were conducted in the form of Google form filling, where I had 11 participants out of which two were UI designers, six were students and three were professors, who were asked a set of 10 questions. The questions I asked are drafted on the right
Out of the 11 participants in the study, I have drafted one persona below, which includes the student who will be taking her first class, and another one from an organizer perspective, that is the professor
Link to the google form used for the user interview-
How ofted do you use zoom for video call?
How ofted do you use participate on zoom calls?
Are you someone, who likes to take the lead or take initiatives in a zoom call or remote meetings?
Have you ever felt uncomfortable or awkward in a Zoom meeting with people you didn't know?
How important is it for you to build rapport or establish a connection on zoom call?
Have you ever felt uncomfortable with strangers during zoom calls or breakout rooms?
In that case, do you prefer to use some kind of ice breakers?
What are you go to ice-breakers in online meetings or zoom calls?
Outcomes
Following the user interview, and the survey, following was the statistics derived from the outcomes, throw light further into the problem, and give us a bigger picture to study
Personas Building
I then went ahead to empathize with two such users, to study their background and understand where their answers are coming from by crafting their personas
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Customer Journey
Building the customer journey for my user, in the existing Zoom app highlights the differences and gaps the app has currently, and also the paint points leading to the opportunities, that we as a team were trying to solve through this case study.
Market Analysis
After researching and understanding the pain points of my users, it was essential to see, which apps in the market, currently acutally address these problems. So I went ahead and conducted a market analysis.
Ease of Use
Cost
Security and Compliance
Breakout rooms, reactions, hand raising, and polling
Limited engagement features. Integration into Google apps
Chat, threaded conversations, @mentions and emojis.
Virtual backgrounds, reactions, and emojis.
User-friendly interface. Intuitive controls.
Various pricing plans, including free and paid options
Limited features addressing psychological barriers.
Reactions, emojis, and personalized backgrounds
Simplicity and ease of use.
Feature-rich interface. May be perceived as more complex.
Google Workspace with various pricing plans
Included in pricing plans, with productivity tools.
End-to-end encryption for meetings.
Encryption and security measures.
Adheres to security and compliance standards
Criteria
Features for Virtual Collaboration
Upto 1000 participants.
With Google Workspace integration.
Upto 300 participants, and Microsoft 365 integration.
Engagement and Interaction
Psychological Barriers
Define Goals
The user research along with market research, gave us insights on the bigger picture and a bigger problem to solve, and thus helped us to map out the scope and goals we aimed to achieve through this study, as follows.
Opportunities for users to network and connect with each other
Increase collaboration and initiative taking by user, up to 83%
Aiming to increase interactions and participation by 72% in zoom calls
Reduce time taken to decide ice-breakers and increse effeiceny and save time
Estimating reduce in discomfort levels on a zoom call by 20%
Brainstorming
Now that we had clarity on what we aimed at, and what our competitors lacked. As a team, I led the brainstorming session to draft solutions in a heated session with my product managers.
Feature Prioritization- MoScoW approach
Now based on the solution sketeched, we drafted features and did feature prioritization based on an intense discussion with the product managers, and the feasibility of the features
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
To draft the flow of the features and how we will integrate this into the existing Zoom application we drafted wireframes
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Hi-Fidelity Wireframes
I converted the sketches into a hi-fidelity prototype to further get a picture add interactions and get a whole picture of the flow
User interface flow-
Host screen
User interface flow-
Participants screen
I am working on the testing part of it, if you want to know more you can
reach out to me at sonipinkle@gmail.com
Reach out to me
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