When we say things like "casting a wide net" in the world of User Experience in most cases this isn't a good thing because it means the wider the net we cast the less we understand about the fish we catch.
In the case of O365 Groups we have the power to create groups quickly, create focused content, manage permissions, etc., which is really amazing but the ability to do this in some cases gives false promises that we can just "start something" with the hopes of User Adoption and through Rapid-Adaptation maintain or even build User Adoption.
While it is true that being able to quickly adapt to "new" User Needs helps to "build" User Adoption, the problem is that the psychological effects of a Negative Experience are hard to repair for "current" users once they have casted a ballot on UX.
A good way to go about solving this problem before actually having Negative User Experiences occur is to create Macro User Personas and then couple them with User Journey Maps of the O365 Groups that we are trying to build an experience around.
User Personas and Journey Maps have been around forever and are used in the UX community on a daily basis.
The really powerful concept here is that we are still able to rapidly adapt experiences around our users faster and better than ever before thanks to Microsoft making infrastructures smarter and faster but with User Personas and User Journey Maps it gives us the ability to better understand the "emotional connections" of our users and what actually makes them tick.
As an example, think about knowing the answer to these questions prior to starting any project then couple the idea with constructing an O365 Group.
Workshop questions structured to capture UX for a new interface:
- What is the average age of the people you think would use this online application?
- Will you be using a mobile device to access this application?
- What type of online applications do you use?
- What online applications do you like?
- Does this online application have a direct competitor? If so, who is it?
- What brands do you admire?
- If the interface did one thing that would make you happy, what would it do?
- What would make you recommend this online application?
Workshop questions structured to capture UX out in the wild already:
- What is the average age of the people you think use this online application?
- Do you access this online application with a mobile device? If so, does it work?
- Do you use other online applications?
- Does this application work better or worse than other online applications you have used?
- Do you like this application?
- What brands do you admire?
- What is something you wish this application did better?
- What is something this application does that makes you happy?
Download the Core Persona UX Questions Here
I would really like to start indepth conversations on UD/UI and UX topics and how they relate to the Microsoft Experience as a whole.
Thanks,