Microsoft Teams
Enhancing experience for junior-level employees with surface dyslexia. Improving accessibility features to support effective communication and collaboration.
My Role
Product Designer
Team
3 Designers
2 Engineers
2 Product managers
Timeline
Sept 23 - Dec 23
Tools
Figma
Miro
Jira
Monday.com
Methods
RICE Framework
User Journey Mapping
User Persona
Heuristic Evaluation
User Testing
Overview
The Problem
1 in 10 individuals lives with surface dyslexia, impacting their ability to recognize and spell whole words.
How might we enhance Microsoft Teams video calls to help junior employees read and recognize words more effectively, improving collaboration and communication?
Outcome
I led a team of 5 to design 4 MVP features in Microsoft Teams’ video call desktop app, enhancing word recognition for users with surface dyslexia.
The solution received an average user rating of 4.74/5 and improved user experience by 25%.
Process
We employed sprint planning, iterative design, and continuous feedback to refine features. Weekly check-ins and documentation ensured we aligned with user needs and business objectives while meeting our project goals.
Understanding our Users
What is Surface Dyslexia?
Before diving into feature design, I prioritized gaining an in-depth understanding of our user group. I conducted secondary research, digital ethnography, and competitive analysis to thoroughly explore user pain points and inform our design direction.
Surface dyslexia is a type of dyslexia characterized by difficulty with whole-word recognition and spelling. They frequently find themselves compelled to navigate educational and work settings that do not cater to their specific needs.
Defining our audience
What do people with surface dyslexia say?
I conducted digital ethnography by exploring Quora and Reddit, where individuals with surface dyslexia shared their challenges. This method allowed me to gain real-time insights into their struggles with reading speed, word recognition, and digital tools.
It's not about reading difficulties; it's a constant battle with words flipping on the page.
My spelling is horrible and getting new things to stick in my memory is always a struggle.
Primary user focus
I discovered that junior-level employees encounter more spelling and writing challenges. This difficulty often arises from their involvement in meetings, requiring detailed note-taking and a heightened focus on spelling and grammar.
User Persona
By creating personas, I gained valuable insights into the preferences and pain points of potential users. This process allowed me to tailor the solution to their specific needs, ensuring it met their expectations and delivered a seamless experience.
The personas served as a benchmark, guiding my design decisions and ensuring alignment with the target users' expectations.
Product Evaluation
But Hold On;
Let’s First Look at the Existing Features Microsoft Teams Offers
While assessing the existing features in Teams calls, I identified several that are beneficial for individuals with hearing or speech challenges.
However, I also saw significant opportunities to integrate features specifically to support users with surface dyslexia.
01. Live Transcripts
It offers live transcription in 28 languages, allowing users to view real-time transcriptions alongside meeting content or review them at their own pace after the meeting.
Users may struggle with text size, line spacing, and background colors.
02. Live Captions
Users can turn on live captions from the meeting controls to view them at the bottom of the meeting window. However, these captions are not saved for later viewing.
Users may type or read more slowly than the usual pace. Thus, keeping up with live captions can be challenging for them.
03. Continue the conversation after the meeting
Users can use the chat feature during ongoing meetings, and all messages will be saved in the chat section on Microsoft Teams, helping to reduce email clutter.
Users with surface dyslexia may struggle with spelling and grammar, increasing communication anxiety and participation barriers during meetings.
04. Participate your way
Users can choose how to contribute to the conversation with live reactions, hand raising and other features.
Users may struggle to juggle between multiple chats, participate features, and documents within Teams.
Design Opportunity
Turning Insights into Action
I translated research insights into actionable design goals, ensuring the solutions directly addressed user needs and behaviors. This approach led to a user-centered product that delivered a meaningful and seamless experience.
Contextual Word Guides
A feature that provides contextual guides for challenging words, aiding their comprehension and retention of the content.
Customizable Content Pace
The option of enabling users to process meeting content at a more suitable pace.
Messaging Support
An enhanced chat and messaging support to help communicate with confidence, ensuring that their written messages are accurate and error-free.
Solution
Immersive Reader in Live Caption to improve comprehension.
Integrated immersive readers into live captions, allowing users to hover over words for a pop-up dictionary that breaks words into syllables and offers read-aloud pronunciation.
OKR
Enhance users' ability to read and comprehend new or obscure words, targeting an average feedback rating of > 4.5/5.
North Star
Increase the number of junior-level English-speaking adults with surface dyslexia actively using the immersive reader in live captions.
Auto-complete in chat to reduce spelling mistakes
Integrating the Auto-Complete feature into live chat to predict and suggest the next word similar to Outlook.
This will help users in reducing their spelling mistakes and write with confidence.
OKR
Implement auto-complete in live chat to reduce spelling errors, enhance confidence in writing irregular words, and improve task efficiency by 40%.
North Star
The number of error-free text messages sent during meetings using the live chat feature.
Impact
How users reacted to our designs?
Error Reduction:
Usability tests predict a 40% reduction in spelling errors, decreasing from an average of 5 errors per message to 3 errors, as participants made fewer mistakes with the auto-complete feature.
User Confidence:
Surveys during usability testing indicated that 85% of participants felt more confident in their writing abilities with the auto-complete feature, projecting user confidence ratings to increase from 2.8/5 to 4.2/5.
Lessons Learned
Although the project was incredibly demanding, it proved to be an immensely enriching journey for our group. It invoked us to stretch our limits, acquire novel abilities, and construct something capable of fostering societal upliftment.
Aligning Design with Business Goals
I learned the importance of aligning design with business goals. By collaborating with Microsoft’s Product Managers, I ensured features, like the immersive reader and auto-complete met user, needs while supporting Microsoft's commitment to accessibility and innovation.
Prioritizing Accessibility and
Inclusivity in Design
Designing for accessibility and inclusivity was central to this project. I focused on understanding and empathizing with the unique challenges faced by users with surface dyslexia, particularly in reading and writing, to create features that truly support them.
Leveraging Agile Development for
Iterative Improvement
Embracing agile development allowed for rapid iteration and effective response to user feedback. By breaking the project into sprints, we made incremental improvements, ensuring our designs stayed aligned with user needs and evolving requirements.
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