This Hackathon aims to design a useful product within Microsoft Teams. Our design - ChainsClock - is a decentralized third-party application which can be applied to multiple scenarios, providing scheduled and instant reminders, reducing the burden of the host and assisting time control efficiently.
It is difficult to control the meeting schedule precisely that many of our meetings are time-out and everyone’s schedule is compressed by the time-out.
1. Solving the issue where meetings often ”times out“ by keeping meetings streamlined, facilitating the flow of gatherings to stay on schedule.
2. Decentralizes "reminder" to reduce the burden on the moderator.
Product Designer x 2
Frontend Engineer x 1
Team Lead, Product Designer
Planning project scope and schedule, conducting research and design
1 week
Winning Bronze Award in 2021 Microsoft & CHT Hackathon
As a small team of 3 people, We were eager to do it quickly in an Agile way to keep up with the competition schedule. I worked closely with the developer to make sure the goal was clear and every detail was carefully thought through.
“ Make daily works easier ” was our core intention in this Hackathon. As we are also daily users of Microsoft Teams, we often hold several meetings weekly. This lead us into exploring alternative ways optimizing how a meeting should be held.
To understand more about modern meetings, we did some literature review and found out some facts that every office worker has experienced multiple types of meetings ranging from casual to formal, and some even last more than 3-6 hours which is very time-consuming. The longer the meeting, the more impatient/restless attendees become. Most people wishes to keep meetings succinct, yet we still have difficulties keeping it within schedule.
“ On average, office workers have 62 meetings per month, and people think more than half of the meetings are a waste of time. "
- Brave New Work：Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization？
Insights 📝
Time control is a big pain-point in every meeting. It seems inevitable to experience some lengthy meetings in our life.
In order to dig deeper on how Microsoft Teams users’ meetings experience, we interviewed 10 users. These people are #OfficeWorkers, ages between 25 to 65 years old, and the core users are around #28-45. So we picked 10 active users and asked what they have experienced in meetings.
” The speaker on the stage has clearly exceeded the time limit but continues to speak... Who will remind him? ”
” Holding meetings and events are full of hustle and bustle. Especially time control.”
” The agenda is already been postponed, what should I do with my next meeting... ”
” If there are multiple agendas in a online meeting, it is hard to give/collect feedback instantly through the live chat room... ”
Based on the user interviews, we understood different roles encountering different pain points during a meeting. There are 3 main characters in a meeting: chairman, attendee and speaker. Being the chairman can be quite challenging as he/she needs to control the meeting schedule while connecting the speaker and observing attendees.
Insights 📝
- Most pain points happened while during a meeting.
- Each role joining in a meeting does feeling the problem of time management.
We all have been a victim of lengthy meetings! In our user interviews, complaints related to time management in a meeting were often heard. Therefore, we decided to start from this pain point to idealize a design to assist time-management for meetings.
How Might We 💡
How can we decentralize the “count down reminding” job from the chairman or even from everyone?
Prioritize laptop design first since more than 80% users joining teams meeting on a PC/laptop.
2- Column design is ideal for UI hierarchy and it can show most of the important meeting information on a PC/laptop.
Maintain a certain countdown selector to keep this design as a “Minimal Viable Product”(MVP)
We focus on screen size for this design because people tend to setup Teams details on computer/laptop.
In some cross-funtional meetings, in different agenda there are different group of people are involved. But we decide to keep the product precise so remove this function for now.
The product name Chains Clock symbolizes meeting agendas are like chains connecting to each other, and we all need a clock to control the meeting time. Therefore, the Logo design concept is from the two initials from “Chains Clock” -> C&C and combines with an abstract clock pointer.
Default Status
Edit Mode
Finish Editing
Meeting Begins : Even any agenda delays, the host can manually check its status.
Meeting Ends
Default
Meeting Begins
Meeting Ends
The meeting agenda from ChainsClock will be released into different sections in teams so users can have discussions based on each agenda, and it will automatically add to users’ calendar.
This Hackathon was challenging. We were able to complete the research, design and implementation whilst being under time constraints. There are still functions and meeting scenarios we were unable to explore and optimise due to time availability. Our intention was to present this as a minimal yet viable product and complete Chains Clock by utilizing the Agile method.
If I can re-do it again, I would keep some time to do usability testing and some iterations to make sure this is more product-market fit. If you have any ideas or opinions, please do not hesitate to discuss with me!
