Video Conferencing Team Collaboration Collaboration Devices Engineering

Delighting remote workers: Why user experience is important

Aug 05, 2020 — Wen Jiang

As a User Experience (UX) Manager here at Cisco, I’m constantly looking at ways my team and I can make our Webex collaboration products better. This starts by solving the problems that enhance the daily experiences of our Webex user community. Good design can do more than engage people by bridging the gap between working and getting work done. Our designers are passionate about how we can make life better by reducing cognitive load so you can focus on your work and let technology take the load. Recently remote work has become our new normal, and balancing our work and home lifetime has become even more critical. Well-designed products can help eliminate the guesswork and enable us to accomplish more with our time.

How we work has changed

Today’s workspaces now include your kitchen, bedroom, and even your laundry room. And if you are like me, these workspaces may double up as the daycare center or classroom. You might have to think more about whether you brushed your hair or if your manager can see the breakfast dishes piled up behind you.

Fitting your lifestyle

As designers, we think about the multitude of platforms, physical spaces, and situations you might find yourself in to consider how our design fits and enhances the way you live and work. One of the ways you can see this on Webex, is through virtual backgrounds. They are a great way to show your personal identity, not just to cover messy workspaces. What’s unique about the Webex experience is the quality and purpose behind these backgrounds. Instead of the generic, landscape or office setting backgrounds, you’ll see in other solutions – Webex as original, own-able illustrations and textures that are not only highly functional but also provide a fresh dose of personality to your workspace.

Besides the literal, recognizable office space, our design team has landed on three initial sets that you’ll only get in Webex:

Time and Place. These backgrounds represent different natural environments from across the globe. Each evokes a mood through simple illustrated form and color.
Environments. These are intentionally unexpected and a little whimsical, inspiring imaginative ways to think about the spaces we occupy for work, play, learning, and more.

We saw a need for backgrounds that have texture and color but recede, allowing the meeting participant to be the focus. These have a very practical use for when a calm, familiar backdrop is needed. These have been my favorite backgrounds in my daily meetings.

Webex backgrounds are designed to work in any lighting In fact, Webex automatically and subtly adjusts the lighting levels and softens your camera’s focus to make your image on video more realistic – almost as though you were sitting in the same room with everyone else. This is just the start; we have some exciting themes we’re exploring that make your experiences more fun and engaging. Be sure to stay tuned!

Delighting you at every turn

Another way we’ve enhanced your experience through design is with mirror preview, where you can see yourself on video before joining a meeting. Our customers love it, and I use it frequently when a business meeting immediately follows a playdate with my 7-year old son. Mirror preview allows you to take a peek to see if you’re all set for the big meeting or adjust your workspace. More than a few times, I’ve caught myself in the mirror preview with a leaf in my hair or mud on my chin, after entertaining my son in the garden.

The default grid view is another one of those delightful design features I love that just makes the experience of a virtual meeting that much better. You can see everyone’s faces at the start of the meeting, and I think it helps build that deeper human connection. I like using it with my team, so everyone becomes part of the same space. You can see everyone’s expressions and reactions and switch to speaker focus view if you want to focus on just the person speaking.

Little things matter

We’ve also incorporated some other subtle design features you may not notice at first glance but are there to help make your work that much easier. For instance, pressing the spacebar to quickly unmute. By using telemetry, we discovered that mute/unmute is one of the most frequently used actions in meetings. Now that almost everyone is working remotely, users are more likely to mute themselves to avoid day-to-day background noises. It’s a simple thing but saves time and reduces the number of mouse clicks.

Another “small but mighty” feature we added is the share preview. As a designer, I cringe when I hear people asking, “Can you see my screen?” Many may experience waves of self-doubt when sharing content because they have no idea of whether participants can see what they are sharing or even whether the right content is being shared. By adding this preview, we make sure that you can see your content before its shared. So next time — maybe instead of doubt — you can confidently say, “As you can see on my screen…” from the beginning.

These are just a few of the ways Webex we’ve designed Webex to fit within your evolving workspaces. I’m very proud to lead a high-performance design team that shares a passion for a better user experience. I am thrilled about what is to come, as we continue to improve the lives of millions of people who need to connect and collaborate around the world.