Voltaire wrote ‘Perfect is the enemy of the good.’ Today, we say ‘Done is better than perfect.’
As a product manager, I take a ‘done over perfect’ approach to ensure that our teams deliver products to our customers in a timely manner. We do not delay by trying to reach an unattainable state of perfection.
However, it’s our users that truly decide what good products look like. When users mention that our product needs improvement, we pause, adjust, and get a little bit closer to perfect.
The planned introduction of the new Webex Teams Space activity menu to replace the Activity icon (aka waffle menu) and 4th column will now not be introduced on August 9th (Iteration 6). In response to user feedback from our trial programs we felt that the design needs to be adjusted to better provide for multitasking, in particular ensuring that users can continue to chat to each other while they view a file or join a meeting. We’ve also decided that the way we were going to show the roster of the people in the space can be improved and we also recognized that common tasks like adding a person to a space, changing the space name and marking the space as a favorite were harder to find than they should be.
We’re going to redesign those aspects of the product and introduce the space activity menu changes at a later time once our users confirm that the design changes help them be more productive with their teams.
Iteration 6 will now release on August 15th for desktop and will have the following desktop features:
- Webex Device pairing with WiFi proximity
- Webex Device manual pairing with PIN challenge
- New Calendar Design
- Signup with email verification now using PIN (for users not using SSO)
- Clearer indication that people outside your company are in a space
- More emojis for Windows 10
We will update our Iteration schedule next week to confirm the design and feature updates for August and September. Our customers tell us a monthly update cycle is better for their users’ experience. From October onwards, the Webex Teams App updates will move from bi-weekly to monthly. Monthly updates gives businesses more time to prepare change and helps us provide more certainty.
One big area of focus in these updates will be providing Accessibility for Webex Teams which is a key enabler for workplace diversity and inclusion.
We are also working on ways to extend our trial programs so that all customers have the opportunity to give feedback on our product before it becomes generally available.
Full details are in the Coming Soon section of our What’s New in Webex Teams page.
Good decision on holding back on those changes and gathering feedback.
Thanks
thanks, John
Thanks Damien! The insight into the process helps tremendously – keep up the "done" work. 🙂
I would recommend a couple of things …
1. Use the metrics-driven approach to rolling out new UX.
2. Use A/B testing to validate the efficacy of the UX change.
Have a hypothesis and then validate with metrics, A/B testing. It would result in more effective user experience, and less throw away work.
Sachin
Metrics and user testing (including A/B) where core inputs to this design decision.
I think this transparency is fantastic and I’m especially a fan of making it easier to see the People in a space and which People are outside my org.
Great stuff Damien. Sometimes it is a great idea to take a paws I production and restart.
🙂
Hi There,
What about more status/presence indication, when we will see more of that coming ? Migrating away from Lync, our users are asking for that a lot
We're working on adding additional presence states, such as In a Meeting and On a Call this year
Any indication on when Webex Teams and Meetings will support multistream for premise-registered endpoints?
The feedback decision was massively inspiring. It takes the whole concept of feedback a new level. It's no secret why, within certain circles(particularly the Cisco Social Rewards circle), you are considered a thought leader to those who still endeavor to decode the meaning of the term company man. Kudos to you, sir.