Brand
Microsoft - OneNote
Project
Overview
Through exploring organizing methods for note takers, I was able to integrate new experiences for lose and collections notes.
Collaborative Organization for Note Takers
Disciplines
User Research
Web Designing
Program Management
Competitive Analysis
Prototyping
Wireframing
User Journey Mapping
Duration
6 months
Project Background
Design Question
Microsoft's One Note acts as an electronic paper notebook that is used to share, organize and collect notes. These newly integrated methods are meant to enhance the current collecting and sharing experiences that One Note offers.
How might we allow flexible ways for users to navigate and organize large sets of notes they created alone or in collaboration with others?
The Opportunity
How might we allow flexible ways for users to navigate and organize large sets of notes they created alone or in collaboration with others?
How might we...
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Flexible: enable more than one view or experience
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Navigate: make it easy for users to find and use their notes
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Organize: enable users to easily arrange and store notes
Designed to function as an electronic version of a paper notebook, the current design acts as a note-taking and personal information management application for collecting, organizing and sharing digital information. However, this design is limiting when it comes to navigating and organizing large sets of notes that users either created alone or in collaboration with others.
━━ Research
Understanding the Product
Through doing independent online research, I was able to gain a deeper understanding for this opportunity space. Upon my research, I found that online note-taking applications have various motivations for their particular ways of organizing, navigating, and viewing notes.
After this, I conducted a product audit of One Note mobile and online, in order to identify all of the organizing and viewing experiences to maximize the new features later.
After evaluating the current product and understanding some of the limitations that come with the search, organizing, and viewing experiences, I conducted a competitive analysis. Through this, I was able to better evaluate how direct and indirect competitors deal with similar challenges I found with the current One Note.
The following companies were a part of this audit:
Speaking to our Students and Working Professionals
The competitive audit gave me an opportunity to gather viable information to develop effective interview and survey questions. First, we conducted 6 interviews with students and working professionals then conducted 50 online surveys. Both of these efforts helped unpack and contextualize when and why users find and use their notes, how they currently arrange and find notes, and what they currently understand about their collection of notes
"I like that you can lock notes with a password on Apple notes"
"I switched to Notability because it can search my handwriting and pdf's when I use my Ipad."
"OneNote sucks at syncing so I use Google Docs for collective notes with other people because of comments and real-time syncing."
"My team has been adding onto a continuous document separated by dates for months so it's hard to view all our notes collectively"
Takeaways
● Users value being able to access notes on different platforms, i.e laptop, iPad, smartphone
● The feature that allows users to search for multiple keywords in one instance is favored
● Collaboration with peers was a valued feature
Building a Cohesive Story
After conducting interviews and survey's, it was important to accurately portray the needs and pain points users face with digital-note taking. But how? We created an affinity diagram to organize the data by using Miro and then built two personas to showcase the frustrations and needs users experience,
Opportunities Within Their Journies
In order to craft a cohesive vision of a student and working professionals' story, it was necessary to organize their day-to-day experiences into actionable design opportunities. This helped me prepare for design requirements to narrow our focus on explorations and ideations
━━ Explorations
Explorations Through Wireframes
With various areas of opportunities to design for, I wanted to highlight design solutions that correlate to any frustrations or aspects of note-taking that were uncovered through research.
Prioritizing Opportunities
Due to the in-depth research and opportunity space, we found that there were different avenues to explore for individual searching, viewing, and organizing experiences.
The rationale for the final designs were:
Competitive Analysis: OneNote has the opportunity to optimize their experiences by evaluating how their competitiors do so.
Research: From researching, we found that OneNote tends to promote individual notetaking in comparison to a collaboritaive working space.
Covid-19: With working from home becoming more normalized, the need for online collaborative platforms will be essential to the success of our users.
With the final designs, we aimed to answer the following questions...
How might we ensure users can seamlessly communicate with their peers within OneNote itself?
A teams integration enables our users to effectively communicate within the note page(s) itself. They can message and comment/mention one another without having to use various applications.
How might we support users to arrange, organize and aggree on decisions?
A Forms integration enables users to create, vote, and organize responses.
In addition, users are able to edit the status of their notes, whether it's complete or incomplete they can let others know.
How might we enable users to view and organize their individual and collaborative notes?
The redesigned dashboard allows users to access and organize their personal and shared notes. From here, they're also able to view high-level details about their notes.
Accessibility Bluelines
As we refined our designs, it was important to ensure they were crafted for people with various abilities to use. Going through the bluelines allowed us to identify any designs that were not inclusive.
Project Overview
The project focused on exploring and improving organizing methods for note-takers, aiming to enhance the collecting and sharing experiences in Microsoft's OneNote. The goal was to allow flexible navigation and organization of large sets of notes created individually or collaboratively.
Disciplines:
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User Research
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Web Designing
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Product Management
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Competitive Analysis
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Prototyping
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Wireframing
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User Journey Mapping
Outcomes:
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Research Phase:
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Conducted independent online research to understand the opportunity space.
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Performed a product audit of OneNote to identify organizing and viewing experiences.
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Conducted a competitive analysis to evaluate competitors' approaches to similar challenges.
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User Insights:
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Gathered insights through interviews and surveys with students and working professionals.
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Identified user preferences, such as accessing notes on different platforms, collaboration features, and the ability to search for multiple keywords.
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Building a Cohesive Story:
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Created an affinity diagram to organize data from interviews and surveys.
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Developed two personas to showcase user frustrations and needs.
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Design Explorations:
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Explored design solutions through wireframes addressing various opportunities uncovered during research.
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Prioritized opportunities based on competitive analysis, research findings, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on remote work.
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Final Designs:
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Addressed questions like seamless communication within OneNote, support for decision-making, and enabling users to view and organize individual and collaborative notes.
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Integrated Teams for in-note communication, Forms for decision-making, and a redesigned dashboard for accessing and organizing notes.
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Accessibility Considerations:
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Ensured designs were inclusive by going through accessibility bluelines, identifying and addressing any potential issues for users with various abilities.
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Future Considerations...
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Create design explorations for organization features that enhance the search
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Conduct another round of usability tests, by having our previous participants test the final prototype
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Explore designs for mobile usage of OneNote
To take a more in-depth look, view the process book here
Credits
Niat Emnetu (Product Manager and UX Designer)
Franklin Huynh (UX Designer)
Khyree Watson (UX Designer)
Iman Yusuf (UX Designer)
Mila Barnes (Principal Design Manager)