Introduction
Helping users accomplish more by improving comprehension and actions in the Activity Schema.
Activity is a product area in Microsoft Teams with over 120 million monthly active users. It provides regular notifications to users, keeping them informed of all activities happening in their Teams.
However, the Activity created some problems for high-volume activity users. They were not satisfied with the existing capabilities in Activity and wanted more value.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Duration
2 months
RESearch
Problems
As a part of a research exercise, the high-volume users shared negative feedback about their experience with the Activity dropdown. Thus, our aim was to provide more value to our users and reduce friction. Following problems were identified:
Scan and comprehension of activity notifications takes time
Reading through each activity notification to distinguish them while scanning, can take up a considerable amount of time.
Additionally, comprehending the full context of the activity can be challenging, since the preview only provides limited information.
Acting on activity notifications switches current view breaking the flow of work
Users need to click on the activity and navigate to the app to take action. There is no way to quickly triage or respond.
With every click, the Activity dropdown closes itself increasing number of clicks needed to access each activity, thereby creating friction.
Define
Jobs to be done
Using the JTBD framework, I outlined 2 users needs through the above problems
Scan and comprehend
I want to scan and comprehend each activity at a glance so that I know which one to focus and act on at the moment.
Act in-place
I want to act on an activity without switching the view so that I do not lose the current context while responding.
Design
Scan and comprehend
Current activity design
For better scanning, it is important for the user to disambiguate different activity types
while for better comprehension, the activity needs to display enough information for users to understand its context.
I conducted a competitive analysis and realised that most of the tools had a distinct space for the content of the activity, whereas the information around who?, what? and where?, was placed closer together.
Repositioning elements of schema
We decided to bring the important signals closer to the top row, so that they are easier to scan.
Users decide whether to react to an activity by evaluating their importance using:
Notification type
Title(Source & Activity) & Avatar
Location
Richer content preview
Redesigning the schema allowed for richer content previews that helps users disambiguate activities even faster.
Text content in Personal mention activity is now showing more lines of preview. For Activities from source except Chat/Channel, we tried to add interactive element in content to differentiate it from other activity like Calendar event, Missed call, Mention in Loop app, etc.
Act in-place
In order to create a guideline around quick actions, I looked at the recommend actions in notifications in iOS, Android and Windows notifications. I then created framework around action in activity, with maximum-to-minimum number of actions that can be allowed inside a schema. Following are the 3 variations of the same:
Below is how they look on an actual Activity card:
Act and response for each of the quick actions has the following framework:
When Action triggers an action:
When Action shows feedback:
Putting it all together
At the first glance it might feel that the schema modification affected the height of the notification and the number of notifications viewed at once, however, the improvement in the content and quick actions makes it extremely helpful in improving scanning and triaging of activity.
Impact and learnings
Impact
The redesign has been shipped in closed beta and is receiving positive feedback. The customers are extremely satisfied with their experience of the new activity schema.
The schema is being adopted across different use-cases in Teams.
Learning
I learnt that meticulous attention to detail in user-interface design can significantly enhance or undermine the overall user experience. This understanding has underscored the importance of precision and care in every design element.
Collaborating with partner design teams has taught me the importance of creating a cohesive and seamless interaction experience. The team work was instrumental in developing a unified design vision that resonates with users and enhances their journey across 45 different activity types.
Thanks for reading!
