Case Study: How to stop too many meetings in work-life

10 min readJun 10, 2021

Tools Used

Figma & Plugins
SurveyMonkey
Concepts

Problem Statment

Business Problem: With work from home, it has become difficult for the people working to keep the same pace as that of the office. Often meetings go on for longer periods of time and the team tends to lose focus on the matter at hand. A team communication application (like Slack) wants to build a better meeting functionality to help the user manage time better and have a focused meeting.

Research Problem: Due to Covid-19, most of us are working from home, and work from home meetings can go on for really long periods of time. This has made it difficult for teams to focus. As a UX Designer, you want to understand the behavior of people working remotely and the difference in team communication in small and big businesses. You may also want to understand the behavioral shift in meetings due to the pandemic. Plan a Research to understand the new patterns the business should be looking out for.

Design Process

I have followed the below design process to solve the problem.

Understand: As part of understanding the problem statement, I have done desk research and user interviews. It helps to get more details and helps to fill the gaps.

Define: In the define stage I have defined different types of users, based on their behavior pattern.

Ideate: In this stage, I tried to ideate and create wireframes based on those ideas.

Prototype: I have created actual UI designs based on wireframes. In this stage, I have studied typography and color theory.

Test: I have tested the prototype with my peers and modified the design based on feedback.

Understand

Desk Research

As the name suggests I have conducted research on the internet, I collected statical information related to the problem statement. The below charts are self-explanatory.

After desk research, I have prepared the survey. In the survey, I have added very basic questions related to meetings to get to know the users. Survey analytics are given below. Please find the link to the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9X2TNMJ

Define the Target Audience

I have defined the target audience, insight from the desk research, it helps to focus on the right direction & narrow down the users.

Most professionals working from home effects this problem. Mostly aged from 21–55. Those users are both urban and metropolitan.

Insights from the user interviews

I Interviewed users with tight work schedule, meeting effects these users the most. Most of the users are working from because of Covid-19 and all the users are working in the IT industry.

Behavior and Interactions of users

Users who have been working in service-based companies and are assigned tasks to be completed on a timely basis. Most of them have 3 to 4 or more meetings. They have to spend 2 to 3 hours for the meetings. This affects their work. Most of them have to work more than officer hours to complete the tasks assigned. They are frustrated because of overwork. They think like they don't have a work-life balance.

“There is no work-life balance, its just like i am a programmer i have no life”.

Some times user forgets the action items because he is not properly organized. He might miss some action items, this leads to arrange another meeting. Which is also time-consuming. Sometimes he is attending not relevant meetings.

The user might miss the action items after the meetings. To avoid these problems he is sending agenda and meeting minutes manually by mail. This also becomes difficult sometimes he forgets to send by mail.

While conducting meetings some of the members will be not available because of many reasons. So it might lead to schedule another meeting.

Decision Making of users

The tools for collaboration and meetings are mostly selected by the client. Most of the collaboration tools are costly. So the client is paying for the tools. So most of the users do not have any role in selecting the tool for collaboration. Some clients ask which tool they like to use, only for those users have to role to select the tool. Tool mostly selected based on price and usability.

Also, collaboration tools selected based on how to can integrate other services like git, mail client, other automation systems.

But we are not able to see tools with all features so we may need to buy more than one tool for collaboration purposes. Buying multiple tools isn't cost-effective. It will be better to combine the required features in a single application.

“Tools selected based on cost and usability.”

Ideal Experience

Users want to be more organized, they want to communicate the action items of the meeting so that the meeting will be more organized, users will not miss any action item.

Users want to keep a to-do list so that they can track the tasks to be done on a particular day.

Users like to keep the recordings of the meeting so that they can refer, also whoever missed can watch it again.

Users also like to know how many hours they have to spend on the meeting.

Define

Here I have analyzed user interviews and I came up with one user group which is more relevant for the problem statement. I call them Prisoner of the Meetings. Because they have fixed work and they are attending all the project-related meetings. Because of the many meetings they are working overtime. He is losing his work-life balance.

Empathy Map: Here we map the user`s thoughts, feeling, what he said, what he did.

Persona: Here we created a fictional character who represents the target audience.

How Might We Questions

How might we questions help to narrow down the problems of the user and find the solutions?

How might we avoid repetitive meetings?
How might we solve users who miss the action items of the meeting?
How might we inform the user, how many hours he is spending time on meetings?
How might we solve the problem of some members missing the meetings?
How might we make users more organized?

Idate

Idea 1: People may forget some action items, which may lead to schedule another meeting, to avoid this problem application will send the agenda before the meeting begins via mail. so that all the attendees are aware of action items for that particular meeting.

Idea 2: Collect feedback and send meeting minutes. Feedback helps to understand the quality of the meeting and improve bottlenecks.

Idea 3: Meeting analytics helps to analyze time spend for meeting weekly and monthly.

Idea 4: To make the user more organized, the user shall be able to manage their tasks in the application.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

I have created rough sketches of the ideas I came up with using an app called concepts. The low-fidelity wireframe gives a basic visual representation of features we are plan to develop.

High Fidelity Wireframes

High-fidelity wireframes are the digital form of paper-drown sketches. I have first created wireframes and tested them with the users. After a couple of testing, I had made some changes based on suggestions from the users.

Wireframe Iteration 1

Home Screen: Home screen contains basic user info, basic functionalities of the application like meetings, tasks, analytics. Also shows today's meetings and tasks.

Create Meetings: This functionality helps to create meetings. While creating meetings users can add agendas and files. These agenda and files will be sent to attendees through the mail, also get the notification through mail and application.

Also, users can enable feedback and show meeting minutes, If these options are enabled after the meeting organizer/attendee can send meeting minutes and feedback. These meeting minutes and feedback will send as mail.

The meeting detail screen and meeting list screen are self-explanatory.

Video Calling Screen: Here video calls happened and also users can record meetings and all the users who added to that meeting can watch video calls later. There is a chat facility incorporated with video calls. Users will have access to chat later in the call recordings screen.

Feedback & Meeting minutes: After the meeting, the user will be prompted with feedback and the meeting minutes screen. This information will be sent to attendees and who all are added to meet.

Analytics: This screen will provide weekly and monthly analytics regarding the meeting. How many years spent from the meetings.

Tasks: It helps to organize tasks. Users will be able to create tasks and they can attach files to tasks. Also, We can attach other users who all are involved in the task.

Wireframe Iteration Final

The main changes are given below

Add functionality to delete meetings.
Updated meeting list screen. Changed to time instead of date.
Moved record button to list of icons on the video screen.
Update analytics screen, where we have specified meeting in hours.
Delete option for tasks.
Delete option for recordings.
“Create meeting” button at the bottom of the screen.
Add notify me before the meeting.
Add Join And Delete button with proper colors like red and green.

Prototype & Testing

I have taken skype as a base, but I modified UI based on my ideas. I have created the UI and tested it with the users. I have come up with the below UI after some iterations.

Home page & Schedule meeting functionality

Functionality & Problems Solved: On the home screen, users can see today`s meetings & tasks. It helps them to instant access to today`s meetings & tasks. When the user taps on meetings the app will list today's meetings. The user will be presented weekly calendar on top of the screen. Users can select the date, then meeting on that particular date will be listed. Also, there is a drop-down near the date from which the user can select any date.

Users can add meetings by tapping on the + button at the bottom of the screen. It will navigate to create a meeting screen. In the meeting, the creation screen user can include the topic, agenda, do we need to show meeting minutes & feedback after the meeting. Also, users can add attendees & the tags like important. In the meeting detail screen, all the details will be listed related to the meeting. There is also an option to notify the user before the call.

Video Call & Recordings: When the user taps on the join button user shall be able to join in the video call. On this screen, the user shall be able to mute/unmute calls, turn the video on/off. Also, there is a preview of other users who joined the call. This will screen also allows users to chat. The user shall be able to record the calls.

Problems Solved: Recording screen will list available meeting recordings so that whoever missed the meeting can watch them again. It also contains all the chat messages.

Meeting Minutes/Feedback & Analytics

Problems Solved: After the meeting, users will be prompted with meeting minutes and feedback forms. This will be sent to each user who added to the meeting, whoever missed the meeting gets the details of the meeting. Also helps to keep track of the action item of the meeting achieved or not.

Analytics help to analyze the hours sends for meetings, weekly and monthly.

Tasks: Tasks help to organize the daily life of the user. Users can create tasks with descriptions and attached files. Also, add other users who might involve in the task.