Microsoft Teams Case Study

My Role

UX Researcher

Timeline

September - December 2023
(12 weeks)

Tools

Qualtrics, Miro, Notion, Figma

TL;DR

Project Overview

This Microsoft-sponsored project reimagined Teams for business-customer interaction, using the double-diamond approach to deliver a high-fidelity prototype that enhances customer reach through Teams Community.

Contribution

I collaborated with a cross-functional team to conduct research and define UX requirements focused on user needs.

Impact

Generative research led to a new onboarding process that increased users’ awareness of the community feature by 80%. Evaluative research led to an increase in user success rate by 25%.

Learning

Understand your teammates and stakeholders when communicating research findings. Be creative and tailor data presentation approaches to increase research buy-in.

problem

Businesses lack ways to communicate with their customers effectively via Microsoft Teams.

Such communication is essential for businesses in times of marketing, product launches, feedback gathering, community building, and customer service. Without a way for effortless communication, businesses will likely lose valuable information about their users, and customers will also miss important updates from their service providers.

For example,

The manager of a restaurant wants to engage with the university student community for a new 20% off offer for the football season.

Since most research has been done with business users being the primary focus, we decided to define our target users to be customers who use Teams Community to fill in the knowledge gap.

Target User: Regular customers looking for new ways to interact with businesses or enterprises and are using Teams for life (free). Stakeholders: very small and medium-sized business owners, community admins, customer services, and marketing team

project goal

To more effectively describe the problem space, we asked:

HMW streamlines communication between enterprises and external customers through Microsoft Teams mobile, so customers can reach enterprises in a shorter amount of time?

KEY findings

1. Users are not aware of the Community feature

Supported by Survey, Interviews

2. Lack of ways to communicate between different versions

Supported by Survey, Walkthrough, Competitive Analysis, Interviews

methodologies

We wanted to understand how users were currently using Teams and how users usually get connected to businesses so we could explore ways to merge the processes.

Therefore, we used mixed-method research to holistically study users’ thoughts and opinions of Teams (survey, interview), how Teams operate (walkthrough), and the market situation (competitive analysis).

- survey -

We sent our surveys to 77 respondents using Qualtrics to quickly collect users’ ideas and gauge the competitive landscape. We collected both quantitative and qualitative data to get a holistic view of our users.

15.49% of participants are unsure about which Teams version they are using (Enterprise, Business, Education, Life)

Pie chart showing the Teams plan our participants are using. 30.99% of participants use Education, 19.72% use Business, 18.31% use Life (free), 15.49% uses Enterprise, and 15.49% are not sure which plan they are using

60.34% of participants only used Teams for internal communication within their workplace

Pie chart showing how participants use Teams. 60.34% use it to collaborate with team members, 10.34% use it to participate in community discussions, 8.62% use it to interact with customer service, 8.62% use it to receive product updates, and 12.07% selected other

39.53% of participants never use Teams to interact with enterprises directly

Pie chart showing participants' frequency of using Teams to interact with enterprises directly. 39.53% selected never, 23.26% selected daily, 20.93% selected weekly, 9.3% selected monthly, and 6.98% selected rarely

Qualitative Analysis:

• Participants struggle to use Teams for communication outside of the organization or with anyone
on a different version
• Too many features and a clustered UI reduce the usability of Teams mobile
• 3 competitors mentioned the most:

Slack
Internal Workspace
Communication

Zoom
External Communication‍

Discord
Casual Community
Engagement

- walkthrough -

A walkthrough of the Teams app was conducted to evaluate the usability and learnability of the current system. Hierarchical Task Analysis was used to analyze the steps it took for users to achieve a specific goal and to identify potential gaps for improvements.

We explored processes of setting up a community and joining a community on a mobile phone to investigate the product from different perspectives.

1. Community joiners (customers) are not exposed to communities available to them

Users could only join a new community by directly searching for a specific community of interest, which required the use of recall rather than recognition.

10 steps were involved to join a community on Teams

HTA for Joining a Community (Community Joiner)

2. It takes more steps to message a person in the community

Messaging someone was a lengthier and more hidden process (~5 steps).

5 steps were involved to direct message a person in the community

HTA for Creating a Community (Community Owner)

- competitive analysis-

We wanted to understand the market situation and identify gaps between Teams and other platforms. We identified competitors mentioned by our users in the survey and conducted a 2-step competitive analysis.

8 platforms were being compared, first using a features matrix of 13 features related to community engagement.

Feature matrix comparing 8 platforms over 13 features

Features Matrix

We noticed, however, that Teams has included almost all features. This prompted us to dig deeper using a competitive analysis table:

Competitive Analysis Table

The various pricing plans prevent between-plan communication

Microsoft Teams has many pricing options, yet only the Home plan had the Community feature, making it impossible for businesses (usually using Business and Enterprise plans) to communicate with customers through Teams Community.

Microsoft Teams Pricing Plans

- semi structured interviews -

Lastly, we conducted 4 semi-structured user interviews to gain in-depth insights into how our users attempted to use Teams to connect with enterprises for customer service. An affinity diagram was used to analyze the transcripts.

1. Teams needs to be used in tandem with other tools

"I cannot connect with people who don't have a Teams account, so I ended up using Zoom."

2. Teams is more difficult and complicated to use on mobile sometimes

"I just want to click less."

"I know how to do it on the desktop, but I can't figure it out on mobile."

3. Users are not sure which plan they are using

"I use the plan given to me by my company, I assume it's the business one?"

"I know I have the business and education accounts, but I don't know which one I'm using now."

Overarching Themes of Affinity Diagram

Research impact

Design Requirement #1

Finding #1: Customers are not aware of Teams' Community feature

Enhance the community discoverability

Provide more opportunities for users to discover new communities available to them.

Design Requirement #2

Finding #2: Users are unaware of Team's community usage

Streamline communication between business and customers

Support more straightforward interact with community admins.

ideation

We added design idea sticky notes (in orange) to our interview affinity diagram as a starting point and decide to tackle the challenge from 2 directions:

1. An onboarding process that exposes users to existing communities

2. New ways to direct message community admins

Snapshot of our brainstorming board

iteration

We went through 4 cycles of iterations, each using different methodologies, to examine how well the solutions address user pain points.

*Problem areas are highlighted in red*

1. Sketch Concept + Interviews (N = 5)

Missing "Search": many participants want to directly search for communities they are interested in
Lack of information: participants look for more information about a community before joining it
Direct message button overlooked: the location of the button is not very noticeable

2. Low-fidelity Wireframe + Moderated Usability Testing (N = 4)

Lengthy onboarding: onboarding has too many required steps - participants wish the process is shorter
Specific community information: participants look for specific information (ex. admin response rate, daily active users) of a community before joining
Unclear search bar affordances: participants were not sure what to enter in each search bar and need more instructions
Admin vs. Personal chats: Participants wish to see the admin's name instead of business name and have clear visual distinction between admin and personal chat rooms

3. High-fidelity Prototype + Heuristic Evaluation (N = 3)

Visibility of system status: a clearer confirmation message after joining a community is needed
Match between system and the real world: using an expandable button for creating a post and starting a direct message is unfamiliar to participants

4. High-fidelity Prototype + Moderated Usability Testing (N = 5)

Feature Impact: Onboarding increased users’ awareness of Teams Community by 80%.
Iteration Success: Average user success rate increased by 25% after 4 iterations.

conclusion

The work was presented to our stakeholders at Microsoft and received positive feedback for the holistic problem research. This opportunity to address real-world challenges has matured my UX research approach, enhancing my ability to adapt research planning and stakeholder interaction flexibly.

This project also deepened my understanding of the UX discipline, highlighting the value of UX research beyond looking for interface improvements. This experience has reinforced the importance of understanding the motivations behind human behavior — what prompts them to come to this product, what matters to them, and how they might behave differently if given the opportunity?

learnings

Tailored stakeholder communication by customizing research presentations to align with diverse stakeholder preferences. This helped me effectively communicated insights and secured buy-in across cross-functional teams.
Adapted to ongoing product evolution. I continued to refine research strategies and questions to keep insights relevant despite frequent updates. For instance, I conducted multiple rounds of product walkthroughs with each new software release to ensure insights remained current and actionable within the existing product.
Navigated recruitment constraints by carefully defining research objectives, screening participants, and asking targeted questions to extract valuable insights. I updated screener several times using pilot tests to make sure we reach our target population efficiently, getting enough participants within a short amount of time.