Microsoft Communities
Simplifying community management
A sponsored project with Microsoft through Georgia Tech's MS-HCI research class. The solution differentiates Microsoft's new product - Teams Communities from many other community-based products on the market by specializing on groups primarily interacting during in-person events.
Team: Ross Bonifacio, Cady Hamby, Tao Lu, Hiya Sachdev
Role: UX Design + Research
Year: 2023
Event Check-In & Analytics
Tracking Success & Growth
Streamlines registration and attendance tracking for community owners, enhancing in-person recruitment events.
Event Channels
Simplifying External Collaboration
Provides simple onboarding for external collaborators and guests, special community access to conceal member identity, and archiving abilities.
Community Story
Capture & Share Moments
Enable members to share event moments through various media and establish an easy way to access them later. Allows owners to promote community activities to potential members.
Community Recap
Strengthen Community Bonds,
Reward Engagement
Reward Engagement
Foster engagement for new and current members and reward member contributions through automatic tag & photo memory generation.
Problem Significance
In December 2022, Communities replaced the free version of Teams as Microsoft seized the opportunity to integrate their successful enterprise tools into various aspects of people's lives. Communities, being one of the first "non-business" products, has on opportunity to alter users' perceptions of Microsoft's tools and break into a "for-life" market.
Market Landscape
Microsoft's entry into this field is opportune, given that many platforms are general communication tools rather than community-specific. There are notable disparities in platform preferences among different age groups. The primary focus is on identifying untapped community niches overlooked by existing platforms, recognizing the challenge of transitioning already satisfied communities.
Stakeholders
Targeting community owners relying on in-person events, our mobile app streamlines planning, scheduling, and documenting. Emphasis on promoting the community to attract new members and overseeing interactions to maintain engagement. Recognizing the importance of interaction with other stakeholders for effective community management.
Research Questions & Methods
App Walkthrough
Insight: A need for stand-out features for owners to foster community, not a business
- Most of the experience is focused on members, not owners, and feels very close to the corporate branding of Teams for work
- There is a gap in what features could offer something new and valuable for owners compared to other platforms
- Much of the experience is overshadowed by technical & UI issues
Task-Based Think Aloud & SUS Survey
Insight: An experience that can be elevated to better convey its value to the community
- Feature learnability and discovery needs improvement: Users encounter difficulties in understanding, discovering, and navigating various features: messaging, chat creation, community description
Competitive Analysis
Insight: Need for a one-stop digital platform to support communities who engage in in-person activities for a new generation of Community Owners
- Many existing online community platforms (for non-professional usage) target communities that primarily interact online (e.g. Discord for gamers)
- Other major players (e.g. Facebook groups) are not used as widely among those under 25
- Not many platforms provide tools for in-person activities, especially for event organization and community management
Survey
Insight: Instagram for engagement, Channels for organization. Here, there, never just one place.
- Owners are spread across many different platforms, rarely just relying on one
- Social media platforms such as Instagram are the most popular way owners engage with their community
- Platforms with ICR-style channels (Discord, Slack) are more popular for owners to organize and plan with the community
Interviews
Insight: Owners need to communicate with many community subgroups and event collaborators. They are overwhelmed with having to use so many different platforms and strategies for community engagement and event management, because no one platform can do it all. When you can’t keep up, things slip through the cracks.
Final Direction
Based on our research findings we decided to design a 2 part ecosystem of features.
The first being specialized event management tools. They will provide owners with a more organized way to communicate with different collaborators to organize events, as well as keep track of attendance and member recruitment.
The first being specialized event management tools. They will provide owners with a more organized way to communicate with different collaborators to organize events, as well as keep track of attendance and member recruitment.
The second is community engagement, which is meant to dilute the corporate vibe of communities and encourage potential members to engage with each other.
Ideation, Sketch Concept Testing, & Results
Lo-fi Wireframes, Testing, & Results
Final Designs - Visual Alterations
Home Screen
Enhanced visibility with community banners and higher contrast UI.
Main Channel
More personalized channel including banner and ability to add stories to increase community engagement.
Community Settings
Better hierarchy and easy access to new features - community recap and community analytics.
Final Designs - Features
Event Check-In
Event Check-Ins tracks and verifies event attendance easily for in-person events. QR codes provide a quick way check-in attendees and recruit potential new members who come to events.
- Events highlighted to notify members its live
- Owners can send reminder notifications
- QR code can be generated and displayed for check-in during events like raffles
Community Analytics
Owners find Community Analytics valuable for tracking community growth, identifying successful event activities, providing data that can illustrate community’s value
- Gives community statistics over time
- Automatically calculates and presents top events
- Shows specific statistics on attendance and new member acquisition
Event Channels
Owners preferred channels over group chats for more robust organizational features. Event channels create a safe and convenient place for the community to collaborate with guest collaborators.
- Intuitive template channel creation
- Easily add guests through their preferred method of communication
- Simple collaborator management
Community Story
Owners found Community Story to be a valuable way to share memories of community event activities and encourage future community engagement
They found it useful to update current members and attract potential members to see what they missed so they can join next time
- Editable from the community profile picture
- Organized photo albums by event
- Preview from "explore page" side
Community Recap
Owners believe Community Recap boosts engagement in the community by rewarding long-time members and encouraging new members to get more involved
- Fully automated
- Photo memories created from event albums
- Custom nicknames and achievements for members
Final Thoughts
I wanted to extend a special thanks to my team members and Microsoft connections. It has been a new and insightful experience to be guided by seasoned UX research & design professionals. It felt like real world experience to work on improving and adding new features to a newly launched product. This was my first time creating a fully finished application utilizing an existing design system based on insights from in-person interviews and usability tests.
