CISCO WEBEX BOARD - Collaboration Cloud

Challenge: How to improve the work environment while maximizing team collaboration 

Role: Senior Ux Designer

Team: Two product managers, two engineering teams (based in London and Oslo), five UX designers (including myself), one user researcher

Contribution:

• Defined the user model and interface for core features

• Developed the core features strategy in partnership with Product Management and Engineering teams

• Translated user and business needs into UX solutions.

• Communicated design intent to teams and stakeholders in different countries

• Planned and executed customer research in partnership with the UX Researcher

• Defined and designed core features for desktop, web, and mobile applications from pre to post-launch

• Created high-level detailed user flows (specs)

Tools Used: Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite (Ai, Ps, and Ae in particular), Invision

Overview:

Cisco Webex Board provides touchscreen capabilities in the meeting room, combined with Cisco’s sleek video collaboration room systems, connected with the feature-packed Cisco Webex in the Collaboration Cloud. 

Key capabilities of the Cisco Webex Board solution include:

• Wireless presentation: Share your presentation, locally in the room or remotely, without any need for wires, dongles, adapters, or typing in PIN codes.

• Digital whiteboard: Easy to use whiteboard that can be used with a special pen or simply a finger and automatically save content to a Webex Teams virtual space; multiple people can use the whiteboard – in the room or remotely on any Webex Teams app-enabled device.

• Audio/video conferencing system: Make your high-definition video or high-fidelity audio calls directly on the Webex Board.

• Continuous workflow: Connect the Webex Board to a virtual Webex Teams space and your whiteboard creations and other shared documents will exist there persistently and securely, to be reviewed and edited by any member of the team from another Webex Board or any Webex Teams app-enabled device. Learn more about Webex Board here.

What is Webex Teams? It’s a business collaboration platform that provides teams with all the tools, features, and functionality for communicating across their workforce. Meeting, messaging, calling, content, face-to-face and voice, Virtual Meeting Rooms, and the ability to customize via API’s, on any device, anywhere, anytime.  Learn more about Webex Teams here.

Discovery and Research:

To help me understand how users engage in remote meetings, I've arranged face-to-face meetings and remote calls with potential users and stakeholders to interview them. Besides asking questions, I gave them scenarios and asked them to think aloud what would they do if they were in a meeting.

Results:

• Subjects will hesitate to join a meeting remotely before knowing who is already participating in the meeting

• Some subjects are very concerned about their privacy during a meeting

• Most subjects change their environment during a meeting

• Subjects find it hard to follow a meeting when joining remotely (for example, who is speaking, who is sharing content etc.)

Get everyone on the same page: To get a rough overview of the process, it helped to build a very simple journey map. This was especially useful in communicating with the team and have everyone on the same page.

Defining the meeting experience: In collaboration with the engineers, while working in two weeks sprints, I began to wireframe key screens with Sketch informed by the user journey and plan. 

Above: An example for one of the specs that were made, screen when the client is not paired, one on one meeting, a group meeting, an audio meeting.

The challenge continued:

After the meeting experience for Webex Board has been defined, there was a need to align the meeting experience with other products Cisco had in their portfolio. I was given the responsibility to be the UX leader to do so and work closely with teams across the world to assure all customers receive value and consistent experience in different platforms (desktop, mobile, tablets, and web). This project was made in partnership with four UX designers who were located in California and three engineering teams that were located in the US, Ireland, and China.

Test test test:

I created a usability test script in collaboration with a UX researcher listed modules in each area, provided testers with test instructions and expected results. Testing is conducted remotely and in-person across different platforms and popular browsers among users.

Outcome and reflection:

Working closely to the Agile project methodology with a high-performance team of both front- and back-end developers, the product is live and fully operational with dozens of Cisco customers.

This was a marvellous project to be a part of and I suspect that once additional features in Webex board are available, there will be continued growth for the product in the future.