Microsoft 365
What's New?
A redesign of the MS 365 What’s New feature to increase user awareness and engagement
At a Glance
This project creates a solution for Microsoft 365 product users and helps improve the engagement of the What's New feature. Personalization is added and a new HUB system is designed to make users' experience more comfortable.
Microsoft What's New Project
Project Team
Mingyue Weng
Richard Lei
Brady Busching
Ziyao Ai
Sponsor
Microsoft Marvel Team
What I did
Formative Research
User Research
Survey
User Interviews
Personas
Storyboards
Ptotoryping
Duration
February 2022 - June 2022
What's New Hub + In App
Make your communication more intuitive
The Hub Home
What’s New hub is the Preferences and Personalization settings page. The options here are used to manage the large variability in user priority which allows the user to scale the huge amount of data that is available to them through What’s New to the amount they want through user-targeted options.
What's New Home
Users are allowed to launch to see the product of their choice through the What's New Homepage.
Patch Notes
Patch notes are presented for professional users who want and need to know all the information
Personalization — Updates
The update page allows users to update the product they choose or turn on auto-update for all Microsoft 365 products.
Personalization — In-app Setting
Users can manage in-app pop-ups and visual queues for each product in the Hub personalization setting.
Product Details
The product detail page gives users a clear description of their chosen product and launch to the MS 365 product.
In-app What's New button
The What's New feature is now a movable button in the MS product of users' choice.
Save for later
The save for later button will save the pop-up content in a side section where users can check the What's New content when time is available for them.
Video Tutorial
The in-app What's New content is displayed as video tutorials to users instead of chunks of words.
Feel free to play with the prototype on yourself!
Initial Goals
- Bettering the user experience of MS products
- Exploring different motivators for user engagement
- Identify why specific users are not using the “What’s New” feature
- Be personalized for user’s needs
- Tailor a specific experience for users to encourage them to further engage with the product
- Having users be exposed to the "What's New" feature
- Reinforce retention and likeness to continue using the product
Research Question
How can we redesign the MS 365 What’s New feature to increase user awareness and engagement and improve the user experience of the “What’s New” feature page for MS 365 products for Windows 32?
Findings
Interview + Survey
190 survey respondents, 100 passed all screeners
15 semi-structured interviews
Feature too hidden for new users
Users struggle to self navigate to the what’s new feature and this reduces engagement
“I don’t about this feature...”, “What is the 'What New' feature...”, “I have never seen...”
Large variety of expected content
The millions of 365 users have extremely diverse content expectations for What’s New
“I wish the content is more relevant to my work culture... ”
Conflicting interaction preferences
Different user groups said both good and bad things about pop ups and other elements
“I like the pop-ups...” vs. "The pop-ups are kind of annoying..."
Yes vs No Population
The difference in answers between What’s New users and non users continued to illustrate varying priorities and expectations
"I expect they have information for starters..." vs. "The detailed information is useful..."
Personas
Storyboards
Hi-Fi Frames
Future Plan
Looking forward, our team will be presenting our work to the wider What’s New development team at Microsoft. This is a chance for us to represent our perspective on the What’s New feature and start a conversation about the feature that is new and without any potential bias regarding the traditional design methods or backend limitations at Microsoft.
Get in Touch
Interested in learning more about me, my work or how we can collaborate on an upcoming project? Feel free to reach out anytime, I would be more than happy to chat.
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