UX & Design - Bob Corish

Multiple Devices, Microsoft Teams

Mobile Sharing and Companion Experiences for Microsoft Teams Meetings.

Lead UX/UI designer & researcher, In collaboration with colleagues at Microsoft Research Cambridge and Microsoft Teams

Use your computer and phone together in video meetings

Video meetings are surprisingly difficult. Although we can see and hear one another on almost any device, content and control are isolated on devices or physically limited to the room. Social nuances and engagement can be hard for remote participants.

This work explores how to enable devices to act as companions. We look to ways in which our devices can be dynamically aggregated and disaggregated to create user experiences that adapt to the changing social and activity demands we encounter throughout the day.

Multiple Devices
Testing live video from a phone, with realtime annotation in a multi-location online Teams meeting.

Design workshops.

Testing the prototype.

Social intelligence and adaptability

Our devices should work together as flexibly as we do. Video meetings traditionally limit each person to one device at a time, but many meeting tasks would be easier with two. Remote users often can feel left out when physical surroundings can’t be seen clearly from a computer or room camera.

We researched, designed and built features so that a user can add any combination of devices to a video meeting, support spontaneous tasks from any device, distribute tasks across multiple devices and add content from any device.

Design Variations
Companion landing screen UI.

This work explores how to improve video-mediated collaboration by bringing social intelligence to meetings. In Microsoft Teams you can now use your computer and phone together in meetings, without conflict, for more flexible communication, sharing, and control.

Scenarios

• Broadcast live video and snapshots to stage from companion.

• Show people on a companion device.

• Show and engage with content from a companion device.

• Transfer a meeting from primary to companion.

Icon Design
Simple and straight forward. All icons are built on a grid of 32 x 32units. This construction helps to build icons that will render pixel perfect in 16 to 128+ pixels.