Helping users easily share projects to enable more team collaboration in VR
Design Brief
Prospect is a VR tool that helps users in industries like architecture, engineering, and construction bring 3D models in virtual reality. The challenge was to improve the user flows in Prospect’s Desktop Library. In particular, exposing the currently nested invite collaborator feature to allow team collaboration in VR.
My role as the senior product designer was to design a new user flow that introduces invite collaborator feature, and update any visual language of the prospect library with the new addition of cloud-hosted files.
Problem
The existing Invite Collaborator flow struggled with several usability issues.
User feedback indicated that the ability to add collaborators was undiscoverable. There was also an opportunity to update the user flow to enable project sharing, and it would open up the files to be accessible by more users.
Design
How should we present the experience of inviting a collaborator upfront?
The existing invite collaborator flow involves five steps to grant file access, and only one file is shared at a time. What if we condensed the steps and introduced invites to collaborators earlier in the process.
Stakeholder Buy-in
Once I had the new concept of an improved invite collaborator flow, I presented the wireframes for input. The review group includes the Head of Product, a customer success manager, and my design team.
Review Feedbacks
Project needs to be Synced to invite collaborators, how to educate users about the result of Unsyncing project, and the result of project collaborators losing access of files
Bringing “add collaborator” action upfront into the project management area may cause visual confusion, review hierarchy of action buttons
A project settings interface is needed to nest project oriented actions.
Key UX decision 1
Add “Sync Project” into initial project creation process.
Adding the sync toggle will reduce one step for users to invite project collaborators.
Key UX decision 2
Add a Project Setting modal to collect functions such as sync and unsync project, delete project, and rename project.
Grouping similar project editing features into one modal will help organize interface to improve UX.
Detailed Prototypes
UI/UX design improvements
Emphases on primary action Create Project
Redesigned project status icons to reflect project status, with the addition of Shared Projects
Cleaned up unnecessary title and icons that were clutter to the interface
Redesign of the Project Management Area
With the addition of Collaborator settings action in this area, three action buttons in the current layout is confusing for the users. I introduced the area directly below project title as project action zone. Since I am introducing a new visual signifier of circular buttons for users, I worked with the engineer to add hover action tool tips to label each button.
New icons and project status system
The existing cloud icon to indicate syncing and unsyncing of project, but does not allow room for indication of Shared Project. I created a new project icon to help distinguish project vs. file, and to show project status.
Engineering Handoff & Ongoing QA
Due to the complexity of this project, there were multiple engineering teams involved to enable project sharing on the back-end and implement my new user flows on the front-end. I worked with the product manager and engineering team to implement in phases and test rigorously throughout the implementation to catch edge cases and corner cases.
Results
Project creation and invite collaborators user flow
In VR project sharing experience
The new user flow design is extended to Prospect’s VR platform. I worked with IrisVR’s 3D designer to extend the same experience from PC platform to the VR platform.
