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

My contribution and Impact

I spearheaded the design of 4 MVP features to improve accessibility for users with surface dyslexia in Microsoft Teams' video calls. I conducted in-depth user research, developed personas, and guided the design process from ideation to implementation.


Additionally, I facilitated usability testing, achieving a 4.75/5 satisfaction score and reducing project turnaround time by 15%.

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

The accessibility improvements led to a boost in task efficiency for the target users and enhanced the overall user experience by 25%.


The project successfully aligned with Microsoft’s accessibility goals and strategic product roadmap, while also improving cross-functional collaboration and speeding up delivery.

Glimpse of Design Decisions

Jump to the Solution

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.

  • Crafted with passion and countless cups of coffee.

  • Last updated: June 2024.

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