How could people better communicate across teams and organizations?
About Sirius Workspace
Team communication and team management is at the core of virtual workspace. As Covid-19 accelerates the development of market of digital workspace, it is important to understand people’s priority of needs and find new opportunity space for market growth.
Sirius Workspace is a digital workspace and team communication platform newly launched by NetEase in Dec, 2020. I was responsible for designing the team management experience for Sirius Workspace’s Beta Version from scratch, and then I proposed a series of iOS widgets to improve its customizability and extensibility.
Goals
1. Understand user’s priority of needs for digital workspace;
2. Build the team management experience for Sirius’s Beta version from scratch;
3. Improve the clarity and customizability of team communication experience.
Type
Internship project at NetEase
Team
2 product managers, 8 engineers
Duration
Sep 2020 to Present
My Role
User research, UX design, visual design, user-testing
Project 01: Team Management Experience
For the first part of this project, I was responsible for designing the team management experience for Sirius Workspace’s mobile platforms (iOS & Android). With the “Contacts” function, the user could easily retrieve, view and edit the information of their coworkers across teams. While standing on its own as an independent module, the “Contacts” function is also deeply integrated with other functions of the app including “Messages”, “Calendar” and “Cloud Drive”.
Design Process
01
Early Research
—Online Survey
—User Interview
—Affinity Mapping
—User Persona
02
Focused Analysis
—User Journey Map
—Information Architecture
03
Early Iteration
—Competitive Analysis
—Wireframe
04
Prototype & Feedback
—UX Design
—Visual Design
—User Testing
Sirius Workspace is envisioned as a to-B product which targets at large organization. With our target users in mind, we first started to send out online questionaries to understand users needs for digital workspace in large organizations.
By collecting 4000+ online questionaires, we were able to identify important opportunity space for our product as shown below. Feedback revealed that “Team Management / Team Communication” was one of the most needed functions and was at the core of virtual workspace.
By collecting 4000+ online questionaires, we were able to identify important opportunity space for our product as shown below. Feedback revealed that “Team Management / Team Communication” was one of the most needed functions and was at the core of virtual workspace.
With the idea of Team Communication in mind, I then conducted in-depth user interviews (online + in-person) to understand the users’ pain points and expectations. Feedback showed that there were mainly two types of user personas: 1) Managers, whose goal is to manage members / send messages and files to co-workers across teams; 2) Workers, whose goal is to communicate and collaborate with co-workers across teams.
For the first type of users, clarity is at the core of their team management experience. For the second type of users, integration is at the core of their cross-team collaboration experience and they expect the virtual workspace platforms to be as integrated, customized and efficient as possible. It was important for Sirius to satisfy both types of user needs.
For the first type of users, clarity is at the core of their team management experience. For the second type of users, integration is at the core of their cross-team collaboration experience and they expect the virtual workspace platforms to be as integrated, customized and efficient as possible. It was important for Sirius to satisfy both types of user needs.
Given the user personas and user journeys above, I was able to list out important potential features of Sirius, and design the information architecture of the team communication experience.
Project 02: Customize the Desktop
Since Sirius only launches its Beta version on the mobile platforms currently, the homescreen of users’ phones becomes an important entry point for and touchpoint of Sirius’s digital workspace experience.
For the second part of this project, I was responsible for designing new UI Widgets for Sirius to adapt to the iOS 14 system. The goal is to improve customizability and extensibility of Sirius to better adapt to user’s personal habits of working, and therefore ultimately increase the user intention rate.
For the second part of this project, I was responsible for designing new UI Widgets for Sirius to adapt to the iOS 14 system. The goal is to improve customizability and extensibility of Sirius to better adapt to user’s personal habits of working, and therefore ultimately increase the user intention rate.
