Purpose
To create seamless interactive virtual meeting experiences
Role Team Tools Duration
UX Researcher Me + 1 UX Designers Figma 3 months
Research Methods
Competitive Analysis, Interview, Usability Testing
Overview
The second quarter that our school officially started using Zoom to teach, it was a period of time that both students and professors were adapting a new way to learn and teach in the pandemic. My teammate and I observed the problems and tried to solve them through design thinking process.
Research - Oh no, professors are frustrated in Zoom
Our main research goals are finding the pain points that cause professors frustration while hosting meetings on Zoom. We believe that with our target user base of professors at over 700 universities and colleges, this subject is worth searching for deeper insights.
We have used observation to collect data qualitatively. We attended Zoom classes with 10 different professors and took notes of difficulties and frustrations they mentioned or encountered. We decided that direct observation was appropriate because it would give us insight into what was going wrong for professors in the context of everyday use without giving them the chance to downplay recurring usability problems like an interview or survey might.
Strong Findings
- There is a lack of feedback for muting/unmuting. When students forget to mute in an open to discussion virtual environment, professors have to mute them individually to avoid class continuing to be interrupted.
- Professors sometimes do not realize that they are not sharing their screens until a student or TA points it out to them.
- Professors sometimes do not realize that they are not sharing their screens until a student or TA points it out to them.
- Sharing content such as videos, music, and powerpoint slides was difficult as the screenshare could be blurry, laggy, or have poor audio quality (this quality was transferred to recordings as well)
- Professors dislike having to repetitively create similar polls. “I wish they could just be copied and pasted instead of creating a new one.” - Taylor Jackson Scott (Professor of COGS 102A)
- Host/co-host permissions can be confusing for professors and their TAs working in tandem with screen sharing and breakout rooms.
- Professors dislike having to repetitively create similar polls. “I wish they could just be copied and pasted instead of creating a new one.” - Taylor Jackson Scott (Professor of COGS 102A)
- Host/co-host permissions can be confusing for professors and their TAs working in tandem with screen sharing and breakout rooms.
Wishes and Desires
- Easy ways to mute specific students
- Being able to duplicate polls that were previously created
- Easier breakout room permissions
- Being able to duplicate polls that were previously created
- Easier breakout room permissions
Our primary findings were derived mostly from observations, but desktop app reviews confirmed that some points were more prevalent than others. The particular site we looked at, getapp.com, had 7,099 reviews for Zoom at the time of writing this in November 2020. We searched some keywords we commonly noticed coming up in our observations, like “control,” “password,” “mute,” and “participate.” Of these, “control” and “mute” were the most commonly mentioned, at more than double the rate of the other words. Specifically, “control” was mentioned in 362 reviews, and “mute” was mentioned 346 times. As we read through the reviews with these keywords, both positive and negative, it became clear that people were primarily concerned with how well the host was able to control the mics of participants to avoid interruptions and maintain the typical flow of a meeting. This reinforced our findings listed above, which also noted that classroom interruptions were a common pain point requiring the host to mute everyone’s mics often.
Problem Statement
College professors need to deliver lectures on Zoom with smoothly integrated student participation to provide high quality remote learning experiences.
Personas - Different types of interactions are needed
About Don
Don is a professor who teaches computer science. His teaching style is mainly lecturing and showing demos, which he does through screen share. He’s relatively new to remote teaching and teaches students around the world who may not always attend class synchronously. He doesn’t typically have in-class discussions among students on Zoom, instead having students ask him questions if there’s any confusion.
Don
Needs
- He needs to make sure his students can see his screen and understand his voice clearly, both live and in recordings
- He needs to maintain an appropriate flow of discussion with his students
Pain points
- He often doesn’t realize his screen isn’t being shared
- He’s often unsure of how clearly his computer video/audio is being shared
- He struggles to remember to record sessions
- He often has to communicate with students about where lecture recordings are stored
- He struggles to communicate with chat, rarely checking it, and misses questions
- Students in his class are often unmuted, accidentally interrupting his lectures
About Anna
Anna is a professor who teaches project-based design classes. She hosts studio classes in Zoom breakout rooms for discussions and group work in class, and is in charge of making sure that everyone gets where they need to be with the help of her TAs. She likes to have students teach each other through peer feedback more than lecturing.
Anna
Needs
- She needs to make sure students go to their appropriate zoom or
breakout rooms quickly
- She needs to communicate with students in their respective groups
Pain points
- She can only send temporary text messages to communicate with all of the breakout rooms at once
- She has to keep reposting links to information (such as assigned groups) in the chat because they get erased for new participants
- She struggles to get students to join the right breakout rooms sometimes since there can be confusion with multiple links
- She can get confused by host vs. co-host permissions in terms of allowing groups and sharing screens with her TAs and students
About Taylor
Taylor is a professor from the cognitive science department. He likes to give live lectures in a way that makes him feel like he’s really talking to real people instead of just to a blank screen. He often gathers class opinions using the polling feature, which is how he adapted his clicker questions for remote learning.
Taylor
Needs
- He needs to make similar polls quickly one after another
- He needs to interact with students often to gain their insights
Pain points
- He can’t duplicate polls or edit previous ones
- He can’t have students do typical short small-group discussions like he would in class because the breakout rooms are too separate from the group and take too long
- He has to readjust polls’ location, wishing they would reappear in the previous location of the last poll
Competitive Audit
Potential redesign features we initially thought of to address competitors
UI: more visual feedback for functionalities of recording, muting, volume
Polling features: save and edit previous polls, duplicate polls
Breakout rooms: group workspaces with shared files, saved chat or channels, hosts' screen shares with breakout rooms (with them choosing to unmute if they want to give instructions to all students)
UX Flowchart: 3 Ways to Participate in Zoom classes
This host control panel redesign focuses on helping professors engage students by minimizing interruptions with three classroom modes: lecture, small groups, and open discussion. The classroom mode will be a feature that shows on the host control panel, and the host can adjust different modes at any time. It applies to all personas for different teaching styles.
The lecture mode minimizes the interruption in online class as students can unmute only with host or co hosts' permission. This mode would be most helpful for Don because he struggles with students being unmuted when they shouldn’t be during his lectures.
The small groups mode randomly assigns students into groups. Like in an in-person classroom, students can unmute and speak to their group without interrupting the class or the main room.
In open discussion mode, students can unmute without permission for professors’ intended class interactions. These last two modes would be most helpful for Taylor and Anna because they embrace small group discussion as well as open classroom discussions as a part of their collaborative teaching styles. Small groups can facilitate talking to other classmates in a less disconnected way than breakout rooms do, so this would be particularly helpful for Taylor.
Sketches
Based on the UX flow chart above for the host control panel, we created low fidelity designs for the host control panel and each classroom mode: lecture, small groups, and open discussions. In lecture and small groups modes, participants are not allowed to speak to the main room without permission.
Students ask questions using the “raise hand” feature, their video will rise to the top with a “raise hand” icon. Hosts and co-hosts can unmute them by clicking on their videos. I also considered the alternative designs when the host is screen sharing. Host will see a shaking minimized tab when students use the “raise hand” feature to help them know when students want to say something. These sketches match our previous UX flow for the same feature.
Low-Fidelity Prototypes, User Testing, and Iterations
Classroom Modes
Option 1: Lecture Mode
Students can unmute only with host or co hosts' permission.
Option 3: Open Discussion Mode
Students can unmute without permission for professors’ intended class interactions.
Option 2: Small Group Mode, Create Groups
Students are randomly assigned into groups. They are unmuted to their groups, muted to the whole class.
Option 2: Small Group Mode, Join Groups
When students have questions in groups, they can use "raise hand" feature. "Host/Co-host will see their "hands" and join individual group to answer questions.
Low-Fidelity Prototype User Testing
User A
User A is a remote worker in his 20s who knows how to use Zoom.
Likes
- Simple interface, easy to work with
Struggles
- Was unclear on how the small groups pop up worked with minimization
User B
User B is a remote healthcare worker in her 50s, who has been using video conferencing software for a couple of years as a participant but has not frequently used Zoom.
Likes
- N/A
Struggles
- Was confused about how anything worked other than choosing to record the session and talking to others
- Didn’t understand what different modes were for or what they might do
User C
User C
User C is a college student, who has been using Zoom since this March but never hosted a meeting before.
Likes
- Small Group is easy to do with no extra steps
- “Raise hand” feature is intuitive, looks like saying “please help”
Struggles
- Was confused of how “Lecture” and “Open Discussion” are different
Takeaway and Iterations
Based on the user testing results, two out of three users were confused of the features because of the names were unclear to them. To make the features more user friendly, in our high-fidelity prototypes, we renamed "Classroom Modes" to "Conversation Modes", "Lecture" to "Participants may talk when they want," "Small Groups" to "Participants may talk after approved request," "Open discussion" to "Participants may talk within their group."
High-Fidelity Prototypes, User Testing, and More Iterations
Conversation Modes
Option 1: Talk when they want
Option 2: Talk after approved request
Option 2: Approved request (version 1)
Option 2: Approved request (version 2)
Above is the alternative version the screens that may show after selecting the Conversation Mode “Talk after approved request.” We added the list of people requesting to speak as a new window in the second version, but not in the first. Although there would be a blue hand on people’s videos in the gallery view signifying participants’ requests for the original version, it might be difficult for the host to manage the requests when the audience is large, which happens often in lectures. However, because groups may be smaller in size, version one is not definitively a necessarily better option, and we did more research to determine which would be a better implementation of this feature in our final redesign.
Option 3: Talk within their groups
Option 3: Create groups (version 1)
Option 3: Create groups (version 2)
Above are the two versions of the “Create Groups” screens that we made. We made these two different screens because we were unsure of what the best balance would be between simplicity and creating groups that would meet the users’ needs. Depending on how specific those needs may be, the second version may be better, but it also has the potential to confuse users since there are many options.
Option 3: Groups panel
High-Fidelity Prototype User Testing
Participant #1
Participant #1 is a college student who uses Zoom for attending classes and joining organizations’ events.
Feedback
- Prefers pop up window over no pop-up window: it gathers hosts’ attention for all participants who need to commute without interrupting the meeting
- Prefers the more detailed window over less detailed window: it gives users more options and freedom to create groups
- Suggests replace “talk” with “unmute” in the names
- Prefers the more detailed window over less detailed window: it gives users more options and freedom to create groups
- Suggests replace “talk” with “unmute” in the names
Participant #2
Participant #2 is a remote worker in his 20s who uses Zoom for company get-togethers.
Feedback
- "Talk after approved requests" is a little wordy
“Talk when approved” might be better
- Would left click the hand to choose to allow talking request
- Fix the allow unmute panel screen
- Add time limit option
- Hand symbol could use a caption on group panel like “attention requested” or something with the word request
- Group hand request icon might be better next to the join button
- Be able to specify a range for the create groups screen “between” x and y
Participant #3
Participant #3 is a remote healthcare worker in her 50s who has been using video conferencing software for a couple of years as a participant but has only used Zoom on a few occasions with her friends.
Feedback
- Maybe shorten mode names
- Perhaps use the word unmute instead of talk
- Maybe “talk freely” (or current version)
- Maybe “talk with host’s approval”
- Talk within their groups isn’t especially obvious; maybe “group discussion” or “talk within groups”
- Maybe use the word “allow”
- Didn’t know how she would unmute the person requesting it from the default gallery view, but understood the alternate screen with the allow unmute button
- Maybe “allow unmute” could be condensed or reworded
- Hand symbol isn’t completely clear on join groups panel, should add caption somewhere around hand with “request host,” “need help,” or similar message
- Hand symbol might be better to the right of the join button
- Ranges of possible group sizes might be better than at least/at most settings
Iterations and Final Design
While each of these three participants was asked for their feedback separately, there were some similarities in the feedback that they gave. The more common a suggestion was among them, the more weight we gave it when considering what to revise in our prototypes.
We first asked our participants for feedback on the entry point with the Conversation Modes label and icon on the bottom control panel. No one had any suggestions or critiques, so we simply left it as it was.
Conversation Modes
Next, we showed them our different selectable conversation modes within the panel to get their thoughts on those. We took suggestions from our participants to improve our wording, saying “unmute” instead of “talk” to be more explicit and replacing words with briefer ones that captured the same meaning. Ultimately, we ended up changing the names of our conversation modes to be more clear in their meaning. Below are screens from our prototype showing these name changes:
Option 1: Participants may unmute anytime
Option 2: Participants may unmute after approval
Option 3: Participants may unmute within groups
All three participants told us that the screen including the panel for approving unmute requests was better than our original version without it. Participant #3 couldn’t think of an intuitive way to approve an unmute request from the gallery view, but she found it easy to do in the panel with an obvious button. As a result, we decided to use the alternative version of the screen over the original one for our final prototype. This alternative function is shown in the panels below:
Option 2: Participants may unmute after approval, unmute requested (unmute request window closed)
We also fixed a few minor cosmetic issues with our prototype apart from what participant feedback suggested. For example, we removed an erroneous highlight on the Conversation Modes button when it wasn’t supposed to have been clicked, and we fixed the borders and colors of some panels to better match the real ones currently used on the Zoom application on Mac.
Two Before-and-After Stories
We also modified our screens for creating and interacting with groups:
Option 3: Participants may unmute within groups, create groups
Option 3: Participants may unmute within groups, request to unmute in groups
Originally, we decided to use the raised hand icon in our initial prototype both for groups requesting that a host join them and individuals requesting to be unmuted in the main session because we thought this would be the best symbol for both situations since it would mirror similar situations in real life. However, two of our participants noted that it wasn’t necessarily obvious what the symbol meant, especially for the use of requesting that a host join a group. Both participants suggested that we use some captions for the icons to further make it obvious what the message was meant to be. We added captions that read “Host Requested” and “Unmute Requested” next to the icons in their respective contexts as a result. We also moved the hand icon on the group panel closer to the join button at the suggestion of these two participants since they were closely linked in purpose. Below is a depiction of the group panel page before and after modifications according to this feedback, showing where the specific changes were made:
For the alternative screen for group creation, we were met with mixed responses. Participants liked the idea of being able to more specifically determine the number of people that could be in a group, which was better facilitated by the alternative screen, but they also said this second version was somewhat confusing or unnecessarily complicated-looking. Two people suggested that the “at least” and “at most” selections might be better combined into a “between” option, where users could input a range of acceptable group sizes. As a result, we created a new third version of this screen that included this function, leading to only having two radio buttons in this section rather than the four we did in our original second version. The changes are shown below:
Reflection
The time we redesigned Zoom was the second quarter that our school officially started using Zoom to teach. It was a period of time that both students and professors were adapting a new way to learn and teach in the pandemic. My teammate and I observed the problems and tried to solve them through design thinking process. At the same time, Zoom was updating very often to best serve its users' needs. To redesign under such circumstance, we want to avoid redesign conflicts on updated versions. We carefully designed the feature that would improve the experience our target audience the most but also apply to all users.
