Joining conference calls from a mobile device used to involve flipping between email and the phone's dialer to manually input an 800 number and passcode — an error-prone, frustrating experience for users who just want to join the call as quickly as possible. Aside from this poor end user experience, the process also cost PGi customers millions in 800-number expenses, since few users bother to look up and dial less costly local conference numbers when traveling (especially abroad). To solve both the end-user and the business problems, PGi prototyped a calendar app to help users connect to conference calls easily and save customers millions. This project began in research and prototype form in 2013, releasing 1.0 iOS and Android apps in Q1 2014. From 2015 to 2017, iMeet Agenday grew rapidly in scale and customer focus and is available today free on both iTunes and Google Play.
Objective
PGi is the world's largest dedicated provider of collaboration solutions. The end-user goal was to eliminate pain from the mobile join experience by providing an easy, one-touch method to join calls. Since we targeted ALL mobile users, not just PGi customers, we decided to support one-touch joins for any meeting including competitors like WebEx or GoToMeeting. We also sought to delight users with an easy-to-read, refreshing, consolidated calendaring experience.
Challenges
Users were already going to their phone’s native calendar or other app to join, manage agendas and schedule. Our solution needed to incentivize users to switch to our app with a carefully curated feature set and standout look and feel. Other challenges we faced included productizing despite a revolving door of product leadership, and acquiring non-PGi users as the second-to-market joining app behind MobileDay.
Role + team
Lead UX + UI Designer; partnered and/or stood in as product manager; collaborated with the world’s best lead engineer.
Result
iMeet Agenday scaled from concept-zero to a $1.2M enterprise mobile collaboration product in three years. Our product earned six awards, 70K downloads, two patents, and a 4.5+ average star user rating.
How is this project different from the GlobalMeet app project?
The GlobalMeet app handles exclusively the meeting experience itself, including the audio bridging, screen sharing and video technologies leveraged during a synchronous meeting. iMeet Agenday handles business agenda management outside the meeting experience, all the way up to the join moment.
We began by discussing assumptions and talking over the opportunities in a workshop with product and R&D stakeholders, then analyzed similar products, reviewed usage analytics from PGi’s existing products, brainstormed end user needs around connecting, and produced personas to better understand audience contexts.
Concepting the app began by mapping pain points around the mobile join moment for people. We explored the friction and risk-laden moment of joining conference calls from a mobile device, identifying the fact that most people’s short-term memories cannot contain full conference call dial-ins plus passcodes. The process requires a lot of flipping back and forth between apps and remembering numbers. If the user fat-fingers or misdials, their frustration compounds. The moment of dialing in to a call is very urgent for users … they just want to get onto the conference as quickly as possible, and are likely distracted by their commute or what’s going on contextually.
After thoroughly assessing our research, empathy and analysis, we whiteboarded several layout approaches for a calendar / joining app, ultimately settling on a day-driven, cell-based agenda approach for helping users join calls. Given our enterprise target, we included a value-add banner space above the agenda list items, allowing custom communications to be sent to users.
We wireframed layouts for primary screens, then socialized the models with colleagues and customers. Iterations included settling on a compact cell-driven agenda list with progressive disclosure for full meeting details, over an original larger card feed approach.
The main agenda list screen leverages classic proportion with the golden ratio, splitting the screen into an upper content section with calendar cells floating below. Cells float kinetically over the top of dynamic, contextual weather backgrounds for a fluid effect. We wanted the user to be able to scroll up and down easily to see their day’s meetings in an agenda-view order, but also be able to swipe left to see tomorrow’s items. We didn’t want to overcomplicate the way the interaction rules cut time as a concept for the user, given the fact that the primary value of the app is connecting in the moment.
After first building an internal private alpha on the iOS platform, we followed up quickly with an Android version. Material Design was yet to be formally launched, but in designing this version of the app, we studied Android patterns and noticed many native apps were already applying dimensional drop shadows. We followed suit, and also leveraged Roboto as the native typeface.
As the app matured, we negotiated intensely with our product and engineering partners to keep Agenday’s onboarding flow as short and seamless as possible. At first, the app did not even require a sign-in, but with successive releases, we added progressively more complex authentication (including Microsoft Exchange integration) to satisfy enterprise customer needs. We made sure to communicate clearly about permissions, allow users to skip logging in, and tout the benefits of signing in via tour slides.
Ultimately, the app presented different authentication levels depending on the premium status of the user. We mapped the entire flow experience for each type of user, identifying and remedying trip points like email confirmations.
One of the app’s most difficult design challenges involved defining flexible interaction templates for any kind of event that could show up on a user’s calendar — from a simple doctor’s appointment with only a time and title, to the most information-rich meeting with multiple attendees and options.
Most of iMeet Agenday’s key interactions play out on the immersive, photography-backed agenda list, but we took care to also define consistent, clear, grid-based functional screens for menus, settings, and lists.
As we tracked usage within the app, we noticed Agenday’s scheduling functionality was the most-used feature behind agenda-viewing and joining. In originally designing the Agenday scheduler, we sought to create simpler versions of the iOS and Android native schedulers with fewer options. Ultimately we slimmed the tool down to five compact cell lines covering top-used basics: Title, Date, Start/End time, Invitees and Location. We hid all extra options and disabled the schedule button until the minimum number of inputs was achieved by the user. We also added enhancements like remembering recent locations and allowing a map search.
As the PGi sales force introduced the app to enterprise customers, our team added Microsoft Exchange integration and several other premium features. We concepted and built a platform enabling customers to message users directly in-app with a branded experience, linking banner content directly to an intranet page or other webpage.
To allow customer admins to manage these messages, we wireframed a cloud dashboard with a step sequence for uploading banner art and content, then implemented. After validating with beta customers, we added additional content to the dashboard’s home screen, including the ability to manage subscribers and monitor usage and cost savings.
In addition to iMeet Agenday’s product design, our team also collaborated closely with marketing and sales in producing www.imeetagenday.com, pitch materials, and other deliverables.
iMeet Agenday is available free on iTunes and Google Play.