Creating a Zoom note-taking sidekick for user interviews

UX DESIGN - UX RESEARCH - USABILITY TESTING

Based on our research, it takes 5-6 rewatches of a user interview to get actionable insights out of it. Therefore, a 1 hour interview takes 5-6 hours to tag, summarize, and share with one's team.

To make it easier for teams to get the most out of research calls and projects, we designed a note-taker that lets researchers take notes while taking an interview on Zoom.

First cut for Usability Testing

I created a prototype in Protopie to mock how people will take notes in Looppanel.

What didn't work

• The users weren't able to use the shortcuts or the controls in the interface.
• The interface looked like a chat window which the users couldn't connect with.

Second iteration for Usability Testing

I removed the shortcuts and added some instructions for people to understand the note taking screen

What didn't work

• The interface wasn't suited for a split screen use.
• People didn't use the bookmarking feature a lot.

Third iteration for Usability Testing

Since a lot of people during our research used Notion and Google Docs, I tried making the interface as close to those tools as possible.

What didn't work

• The interface didn't work visually.

Fourth iteration for Usability Testing

To higlight who's taken the note, I added the names of note takers in different colors

What didn't work

• The different colors for note takers created distraction during note taking.
• The name of note takers takes up a lot of space without adding much to the interface

Final Design based on testing

• Muted the name and time stamp colors to bring focus on the note.
• Removed the emojis as they could not be interacted with during the call.
• Added a bookmark feature which could be accessed using the "//" shortcut. This reduces the number of decisions a person makes during the call

People didn't expect the note-taking space to look like a chat, so we changed it into a more open space that makes the experience similar to a document.

Context

We observed researchers were using a template to take notes during research calls. The templates either contained theme based questionnaire or task based questionnaire

Below are some examples of the templates they use.

Iterating and testing a question script

We iterated on top of previous designs and added sections to the note-taking view and tested with the users.

What didn't work

• Users were not able to use the shortcuts during note taking hence we removed it.
• Users wanted to see the upcoming questions in this view without using a shortcut.

Question script as a side menu

What didn't work

• The side menu didn't work for a split screen view.

Question list at the top

We put the list at the top so it's accessible at all times.

What didn't work

• Users didn't need a consistent list since it distracted them from the main task of notetaking.
• Additional features were causing a lot of distraction from notetaking.

Final Design

Based on usability testing, we decided to remove the navigation from the question script as users didn't face issues with traversing the script.

There was no need for a persistent list since they moved progressively between questions.

What I learned

• Users liked the idea of unstructured notes since it gave a way to take notes that didn't fit in any question
• Users needed simple ways to capture their thoughts without having to remember a lot of shortcuts

Details on more experiments soon. 😎