User-Led Product Design

Voltaire wrote ‘Perfect is the enemy of the good.’ Today, we say ‘Done is better than perfect.’

As a product manager, I take a ‘done over perfect’ approach to ensure that our teams deliver products to our customers in a timely manner. We do not delay by trying to reach an unattainable state of perfection.

However, it’s our users that truly decide what good products look like. When users mention that our product needs improvement, we pause, adjust, and get a little bit closer to perfect.

The planned introduction of the new Webex Teams Space activity menu to replace the Activity icon (aka waffle menu) and 4th column will now not be introduced on August 9th (Iteration 6). In response to user feedback from our trial programs we felt that the design needs to be adjusted to better provide for multitasking, in particular ensuring that users can continue to chat to each other while they view a file or join a meeting. We’ve also decided that the way we were going to show the roster of the people in the space can be improved and we also recognized that common tasks like adding a person to a space, changing the space name and marking the space as a favorite were harder to find than they should be.

We’re going to redesign those aspects of the product and introduce the space activity menu changes at a later time once our users confirm that the design changes help them be more productive with their teams.

Iteration 6 will now release on August 15th for desktop and will have the following desktop features:

Webex Device pairing with WiFi proximity

Webex Device manual pairing with PIN challenge

New Calendar Design

Signup with email verification now using PIN (for users not using SSO)

Clearer indication that people outside your company are in a space

More emojis for Windows 10

We will update our Iteration schedule next week to confirm the design and feature updates for August and September. Our customers tell us a monthly update cycle is better for their users’ experience. From October onwards, the Webex Teams App updates will move from bi-weekly to monthly.  Monthly updates gives businesses more time to prepare change and helps us provide more certainty.

One big area of focus in these updates will be providing Accessibility for Webex Teams which is a key enabler for workplace diversity and inclusion.

We are also working on ways to extend our trial programs so that all customers have the opportunity to give feedback on our product before it becomes generally available.

Full details are in the Coming Soon section of our What’s New in Webex Teams page.