ShareLink Application Day 2
Project Role: Lead UX Designer
Audience
This product is intended for a broad audience which includes office workers, educators, students and anyone interested in creating a collaborative session with colleagues and peers. This was challenging in terms of aligning our development team in terms of priorities and expectations since our company typically targets extremely technical A/V professionals.
Context
The ShareLink application is a collaborative tool, which allows several users to share multiple images and sources on a large display in the same room. Our Engineering team needed to rewrite major portions of the mobile and desktop application in order to support new features. This presented our UX department with a unique opportunity to re-build the software fresh from the ground up and apply lessons learned from previous iterations.
Perspective of a user testing the software. Once connected to a ShareLink device users can choose to share content to show on the large display in a room.
Goals
In addition to our existing user goals of sharing content and managing collaborative sessions, Day 2 had some significant updates based on user research and technical limitations.
Day 2 Goals
Streamline the ability for users to easily connect to a device
Remove elements that didn’t resonate with users or provide meaning
Combine the controls to share with the page that shows the presentation to provide greater control and feedback for users
Update the interface to allow new features to be added in the future. The existing information architecture couldn’t support growth.
Re-design the architecture to follow more closely with platform conventions. Earlier versions attempted to be identical between desktop and mobile apps.
Leverage elements from Extron’s Design System
Day 1 Goals
Create a seamless, multi-platform sharing application that's easy to download and use.
Allow users to share video, images, websites, and mirror their screen or application windows.
Allow certain users to manage sessions by controlling the content and participant behavior.
Evaluating existing design patterns in place, and describing concerns to stakeholders,
Process
Armed with usability test results and market feedback, we iterated on a streamlined software experience that would remove unnecessary elements and prioritize important features for our users. Additionally we worked closely with our development team to update the underlying UI to allow for a more efficient architecture and one that would be easy to update with new features in the future.
Activities
Wireframing and Prototyping
Multi-platform Design
Iterative usability testing
Card Sorting
Day 1 Designs
Day 2 Designs
Results
Through usability testing and product feedback we learned from our previous mistakes and were able to prioritize features that wade the most impact for the user. We also developed a closer relationship with our Engineering team as greater collaboration was encouraged during this development cycle than in previous iterations.
We removed many of the issues we saw from our earlier software iteration while working closely with developers to take advantage of each platforms strengths and conventions. We have ensured that our interfaces can accommodate growing feature sets for the next several years. This product is expected to launch in Q1 2021.