Case Study: Zoom Raise Hand Questions

9 min readNov 8, 2020

The Raise Hand feature was developed by me and Gabrielle Farag as a part of Ironhack's Bootcamp challenge week 3: Add a Feature. The challenge involved choosing a well-known app/ platform and adding a feature that would create value for both the user and the brand.

Raise Hand Questions feature allows users to raise their hands with a message to their hosts without interrupting a class or a presentation.

A user with a question taps the raise hand option already built-in the mobile app and may choose to add a question simultaneously, which will appear on the host's presentation screen as +1 one question. Whenever the hosts decide to address questions or comments, they can expand the raised hands icon, read and attend to each raised hand in order of submission.

Intended Feature Outcome:

Zoom users will receive and send reactions in real-time while watching a presentation in Zoom, allowing them to interact also in real-time without disrupting the meeting.

Feature Success Metrics

Audience Gain Metrics:

Downloads: Number of app downloads in 60 days after launch;
New Users: how many new users have appeared within 60 days after launch;

User Retention Metrics:

Retention Rate: The percentage of users that open an app on the 60th day after the installation;
Churn Rate: Percentage of the loss of users;
Uninstall Rate: The uninstallation number divided by the number of installation for 60 days;

User Activity:

DAU/WAU/MAU: How many unique users have opened your app within a day, week, or month respectively;
Stick Factor: Estimate of the frequency of app entry, divided DAU by MAU or WAU;
Sessions: Overall number of a run app within 60 days;

Through the Process: The User Experience and Interface Design Behind the Scenes

This project was divided into 4 parts:

Discover, Define, Ideate, and Deliver.

During 4 days we worked with Iterative Prototyping, Usability Testing, and Visual Benchmarking. Those tools were used to discover insights on our user's mental model, and come up with a feature that wouldn't only solve existing problems in the platform, but bring true value for both users and the company. Here is our process and how we got there:

Discover stage:

We started our project with Exploratory Research and Surveys to better understand our user's main pain points and gains unlocked with the Zoom platform.

70% of our user’s main platform was Windows/MacOS;
52% of our user’s main function for Zoom was forWork/ Meetings;
25.9% Classes both as teachers and students;
52% of the interviewees used the tool local recording.;
Most users, 65.4%, had no complaints on their latest calls;
26.9% had poor connection and broken calls issues;
Zoom Peak of Daily meeting participants: December 2019 ~ 10 million | March 2020 ~ 200 million + | April 2020 ~ 300 million +

We then used Feature Comparison & Market Positioning Charts to be able to visualize Zoom's and its competitors' strengths, potentials, and shortcomings. This way we managed to have a better grasp on where our biggest niche of opportunities was placed (our Blue Ocean) and what we needed to do to get there.

Feature Comparison Chart to Understand what zoom and its competitors were offering

This Market Positioning chart was created based on data from Gartner, Inc. On Zoom's website.

We found out that:

Zoom's main advantage is that it is a simple enough platform that can be easily accessed by multiple user profiles.;
Other apps are close behind, and they offer more features and customization options.;
Though many tools claim to be user-centered (Zoom included), their UI/UX tends to be very complex and crowded.;

This gathered information that shaped the design of our Interviews. We interviewed 6 users and gathered our insights in a Lean UX Canvas

The Lean UX Canvas helped us organize insights from Markets Research and Interviews

From that, we were able to analyze in better dept the available features on the Zoom platform and came up with some key insights for our Define stage of the process.

Our user's main pain-points:

Zoom fatigue;
Privacy issues;
Repeated manual setups;
Asking questions;
Lack of collaboration tools;
Interrupting Host;
Zoom being heavy on bandwidth;
Complex UX to some users;

Our user's main goals:

Connection;
Unlock Geography ;
Work in a professional setting from home;
Easy collaboration;
Feeling less lonely;
Sharing knowledge;
Reducing social isolation;
Explaining complex thoughts from afar;

Define stage:

In the Define stage, we generated an Affinity Map with User Research Insights. Both Surveys, Interviews, and Exploratory research.

Through the **Affinity Map**, we were able to separate topics in groups and figure out common traits in our findings and **Key Insights**

Most Platforms present complex UX/UI (we wouldn't want to repeat that);
Our users were tired of repeating the same steps for daily tasks;
Our users felt extremely awkward when interrupting someone or being interrupted due to simultaneous talk;
Our users sought the privacy and professionalism you have in a work setting, but now from their own homes;
Our users needed to collaborate remotely, and had to resort to other tools in order to do so;
Our users wanted to feel like those virtual interactions were more like "real life", and less robotic;
Long hours of use caused our users headache, anxiety, amongst other forms of emotional and social distress;
Our users wanted experience customization, and be able to shift the tool according to their purpose (education, social, work, etc.);

With those insights in hand, we developed a primary User Persona, Working Will. A 28-year-old living in California and working as an accountant. Wills main wants were to be noticed by his boss and job promotion. Will is frustrated about having unnecessary meetings and fears not being able to get his job done or being too awkward online.

Working Will is our Primary User Persona, and he just wants a raise and not sound too awkward online.

Those insights made it possible to craft the Value Proposition Canvas while also defining our costumers' jobs:

**Value Proposition Canvas** helped us define our user's jobs

Once we knew what our user's jobs are, we were also able to define the As-Is Scenario; a step by step of Will's interaction with the Zoom platform as it is currently.

Our As-Is scenario made it easier to understand the interaction with the platform as-is now

Once we understand how the interaction with the platform works with our chosen user group now, it is much easier to craft a User Journey Map and understand in which parts of the process we can transform pain points into Opportunities.

User Journey Map helped us define the biggest pain points and niches for opportunity within this journey

Awesome. Now we could see clearly some problems we could solve to bring value to our users and make their relationship with the Zoom Platform a smoother process. We crafted 3 Problem Statements and thought about 3 ways in which we might be able to help (How might we statements):

Our users are annoyed because they aren't able to save presets for regular meetings and need to re-do the process over and over again; How might we make it possible for the user to have saved presets for repeated regular actions?
Our users feel embarrassed when they talk simultaneously in the app; How might we facilitate our user's group conversation dynamics during a Zoom meeting?
Our users feel frustrated when they aren't able to visualize or have someone visualize chat messages during a presentation; How might we make it possible for users to visualize chat messages during presentations?

Ideate stage:

With all the insights in hand, we entered the ideation stage and brainstormed possible solutions for all 3 of our problem statements.

Brainstorming for ideation stage over each problem statement

We then applied the Moscow Method and the Impact vs effort analysis in order to preview how these ideas would interact with some needs and constraints of the company:

Moscow method and suggested approach to each brainstormed tool

Which ideas would cause the most impact with the least amount of effort to be deployed

Once our ideas were on paper and analyzed, we knew what our costumer's jobs were, and thought about the impact and effort each idea would harbor on the dev team, we were ready to do the business side of the Value Proposition Canvas as well as write down the company's Jobs to be Done.

Value proposition canvas helped us uncover the pain relievers and gain creators

Jobs to be done:

When preparing for a meeting, Zoom users want to have all of their concurrent presets saved on zoom, so that they can avoid wasting time on the setup, which makes them feel relieved.
When a host is speaking and asks a question, Zoom users want to be able to speak without interrupting someone else, so that they can avoid talking over, which makes them less embarrassed.
When presenting or screen sharing, Zoom users want to be able to visualize chat messages so they can interact with other users in a timely manner, which makes them feel closer to real-life interactions.

And finally, we were able to come up with an MVP statement:

Zoom users will receive and send reactions in real-time while watching a presentation in Zoom, allowing them to interact also in real-time without disrupting the meeting.

We created a User Flow Chart from a Miro template, portraying our user's happy path:

User's happy path: what we imagine to be the ideal path for the interaction with the new feature

Deliver stage:

Our Low-fi prototype had 5 screens: Meeting, More-menu, Raise hand with a question, visualize raised hand questions, delete raised hand questions. It was made with pencil on paper and Marvel.app and tested using Maze.

Lo-fi screens: Meeting, More-menu, Raise hand with a question, visualize raised hand questions, delete raised hand questions.

Out of 6 Testers we received a 64% Usability Score and a 83.3% Success Analysis report.
Raise your hand while sending a text — 49% Indirect Success
Check how many raised hand questions you have — 78% Direct Success

We found out that a transition screen with a proper counter was needed for our Mid-fi so we added the 1 raised hand question counter screen to make sure our users understood what happened with the raised hand question action. The Mid-fi was done on Figma, to make it easier for us to collaborate.

Mid-fi prototype with 6 screens to help users better understand the happy path

7 Testers: 57% Direct Success
Send a raised hand notification to your host: 66% Direct Success
Delete your sent raised hand question: 48% Indirect Success

The Hi-fi Prototype also had 6 screens and was made using Adobe XD. On this iteration, we used UI similar to the original tool, so we could work with one of Zoom's main advantages: accessible UI for a diverse community of users.

Hi-fi prototype showing the perspective of a student sending a raised hand question and visualizing it

The results were:

5 Testers: 72% Usability Score
First test: 95% Direct Success
Second test: 49% Indirect Success

We created an Atomic Design Inventory also using Adobe XD for this challenge. Ours required very little since a lot of Zoom's UI on an iPhone is directly derived from Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.

Key Learnings:

Some key learnings for the next project:

Key Learnings

Try to prototype with some users I interviewed;
Mix online user testing with in-person testing for important insights on behavior;
Dig deeper into the tools and try to extract its true value instead of just understanding it's possible uses;
Add a key to the user journey and separate actions from screens to make it clearer on the team;

Next steps:

Add a lock preference on specific emoji reactions.
Fix Raise Hand to be bigger when on the user’s screen.
Create collaborative breakout rooms.
Create a tool to have all of your presets saved on Zoom.
Develop a Hi-fi prototype of the Host’s point of view
Save presets of breakout rooms and meetings

Thank you for reading this. Please leave a message on how could I improve my process and/or writing skills! Constructive feedback is ALWAYS welcome.

Isa Sobrinho T.