MultiTask

Problem Background  

The rise of remote and hybrid work during the pandemic has forced companies small to large to host their meetings remotely. Managers prefer their employees to pay attention and interact during such meetings. However, employees might prefer to turn off their camera and mic so that they can multitask without any participants in the virtual meetings knowing. 

Managers also understand that there could be valid reasons for multitasking during a meeting including too many meetings. One study states, “nearly half of executives (48%) cite too many meetings as a reason why employees do not talk during virtual meetings, saying they had too many calls that could’ve been an email”

Employees have no quick solution to multitask on their computer while also demonstrating that they are engaged in a virtual meeting at the same time.   

Our Problem Statement
How might we allow access to the features of virtual meeting applications outside of the application for participants so that they can quickly switch between tasks during meetings?

Research Insights‍

By interviewing potential users we discovered common themes. When using a virtual meeting application users wanted to: 

• Easily navigate between the virtual meeting and their work so that they didn’t suffer from a major loss in productivity.
• Access application features without opening the application
• Control of their audio so that they can hear people clearly
• Change their profile settings easily so that they don’t need to waste time preparing for a meeting

Explanation of the Solution

Based on our user research our solution is an application that allows our users to control the functions of a virtual meeting application when the meeting window is not active. This will enable users to work confidently knowing they can meet their manager’s expectation of being engaged in a meeting while also having the security and freedom to complete other tasks during meetings. The application will be visible and accessible to the user at all times. This will enable the user to freely organize their desktop in any way they choose without having a mandatory meeting application open. 

‍Lofi & Hifi Mockups

‍

‍

Iterative Design Learnings

After we showcased our prototype to the users, we learned that we had the core features they wanted (i.e. ability to mute/unmute their microphone, turn off/on their camera) and that if we couldn’t get features beyond our MVP in the first prototype that would be okay since the application performed the tasks most important to the user. 

Implementation Details

Technical implementation

Where is it hosted? 

Our product is a downloadable MacOS application hosted on the user’s local machine.

What is your tech stack?

We used HTML, CSS, Electron, Node.js, and Applescript.

High level journey of a request

Our product’s interface was created using Electron and each button is mapped to run a piece of Applescript that controls Zoom’s relevant functionality.

Technical challenges

What was the hardest part of development?

Back-end:

The hardest part of development was figuring out plausibility.  Because neither of us had any experience creating a full on application before, we had to rely on a lot of research and experimentation to figure out if the product could even be made in the first place.

Front-end:

The most difficult part of development in the front-end was finding the tech stack specific to our project and learning it on the go. Electron is not a technology I’ve used before, while learning it was exciting, it was also very difficult to both learn and implement in the amount of time we had. Figuring out certain ways to execute things was challenging, especially since our specific project is very front-end oriented.

Does your app have any scaling issues?

Currently, our application only works with Zoom and only on MacOS, however there are readily available tools that could allow our application to work with other virtual meeting apps and on Windows.

What are some key takeaways?

Asking for outside support was a necessity for us in the dev team.  We constantly asked other experts and even our own product manager for additional research or opinions to get over blockers.  In the end, we were able to create and ship a final product with the help of those around us.

Future Steps

Future dashboard features will include: 

• Audio level & input/ouput device controls
• Screenshare controls
• Ability to leave/end meeting 
• Auto-start dashboard when entering a meeting 
• Light/Dark mode