Case Study
'MINDFULNESS'
FOR ZOOM
UX/UI Designer・Feature Integration・December 2020
Lights, camera, ACTION!
Oh, that's not what you were thinking when you started working from home? Were you thinking "More pajama days!" and "Less small talk with Steve at the water cooler!"?
We can't help with that, but we can remember to take a breath before the onslaught.
Research
01
Remote workers tend to be anxious before a video call
Participants expressed various expectations for Zoom calls that create anxiety, including "film studio"-like setups, differences in vantage points, and frustrations when only part of the group were on video.
02
Remote workers rely on various (and sometimes multiple) methods of self-soothing before and after calls to manage emotional cycles.
All participants developed habits to cope with the stress, whether it was psyching themselves up with affirmations or going on a walk to "shake it out" after a call.
03
During a typical work day, remote workers must anticipate and manage multiple emotional cycles.
With back-to-back calls, the rollercoaster repeats throughout the day, sometimes giving little opportunity to recover between calls.
Persona
Overview
Because of the ongoing global health crisis, remote work remains a requirement for many students and employees. Adapting to this lifestyle often results in personal and professional communication issues when using various remote technology platforms
'Mindfulness' for Zoom proposes a partnership with Calm, one of the leading mindfulness apps. This feature integrates Calm’s “How are you feeling?” function in a way that allows remote workers to pause, breathe, and assess their energy before entering and leaving calls.
Platform
Zoom for iOS mobile
Role
UX/UI Designer
Team
1 UX Designer
Tools
Figma, Keynote, Miro
Time
2 weeks, December 2020
Sprint Goal
Create a feature that would address needs of remote workers.
Contribution
In this feature development sprint, I designed the full feature, from research to prototype.
To gain a sense of how remote workers experience face-to-face calls, how they communicate, and how they listen on calls, I spoke to five people of various ages and seniority. Most of them were experiencing remote work for the first time due to the pandemic. Most commonly, these workers used Zoom for professional and/or personal related calls.
The Situation
The Opportunity
How might we provide remote workers with a means of easing in and out of video calls to refresh their mindset before the next call or task?
Early Design
Concept Structure
The user flow for 'Mindfulness' for Zoom was based on a responsive decision tree. Their daily check-in offers an extra pause before entering a call, and an exiting message. The user would follow one of the following pathways.
Check-in data collected over the course of a month would be aggregated and conveyed to the user via email summary with recommendations.
Initial Testing & Concept Validation
“[This feature] Helps you to take care of yourself in a time where it’s really easy to let self-care fall by the wayside.”
—Participant No. 5
Initial testing and concept validation was conducted via low-fi wireframes on paper that were scanned into Figma.
100% of users were able to successfully navigate the pathways, and 80% found the pathways intuitive. According to participants, this type of interaction provided “levity,” “humor,” and made them smile. As the experience was a fixed pathway, measuring time on task was a less relevant metric at this stage.
4/5 users wanted the ability to personalize, whether it was color scheme, the ability to change the exit interaction, or more options to skip.
All in all, the concept proved successful from initial testing.
Iteration
“Some days you don’t want the burden of extra screens. Some days you just want to just get down to the nitty gritty.”
Revisions & High Fidelity
While test participants liked the concept, they also wanted to be able to answer when business called. With that in mind, the flow was revised to allow for more opportunities to move past the feature (1), and the copy to provide more mindful calls-to-action (2).
01
02
High Fidelity Prototype
In testing the high-fidelity, users maintained the ease and delightfulness of the function. Most test participants, however, expressed concerns about privacy—whether their company HR departments would have access to their mood data, or whether this was just a Zoom function. This should be addressed moving forward.
—Participant No. 1
Next Steps
The following are recommended as items to groom for future sprints:
EASE IN / EASE OUT:
Allow users to toggle off entrance or exit interaction
FREQUENCY:
Allow users to set mindful interactions throughout the day
DATA:
Strongly recommended to speak with Legal and Compliance regarding
language on data usage, and make more prominent
EMAIL CONTENT:
Work with content development team on testing and iterating recommended collaborative content
