Designing a solution to schedule & manage multiple time zone meetings
A multinational consultancy services company specialising in sustainability, works with clients across the globe. It runs its operations from 5 locations worldwide (Beijing, Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Zurich and San Francisco).
With remote working becoming the new normal, the employees of this organisation have been facing challenges in setting up meetings. This is because the meetings, whether internal or with the client, typically tend to include participants from more than 2 time zones. The employees are using email and video calls to communicate with their clients and with each other.
How do you propose a solution that can ease the process of setting up and managing schedules across multiple time zones?
Approach
- Finding suitable users
- Conducting user research. (Methodology : Contextual Inquiry)
- Extracting insights from the statements made by the users
- Affinity Mapping to make sense out of all the data
- Creating a solution model and feature-set
- Wireframes
- Final Designs
Finding suitable users
I work in Indian firm where never had to go in the process of scheduling meeting across globe.
Because of that I really wanted to hear the real users stories so that I could identify the problems & needs.
Consultancy services company specialising in sustainability, works with clients across the globe. It runs its operations from 5 locations worldwide (Beijing, Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Zurich and San Francisco).
For the above mentioned company there are two types of use cases
- Meeting scheduling and planning internally (Company operates from 5 countries)
- Scheduling meetings for external clients (Global Clients)
In order to conduct user research, I approached few of my friends and their family friends who works in organisation where they need to schedule meetings across multiple time zones. Although they don’t seem to fit the assignment’s consultancy employees, they still are as closest as I could get. I got an opportunity to interview 3 people. 1 of them is working in Australia, other 1 works as a journalist who reviews national & international films and the 3rd one works in India but frequently does meetings in different timezones.
Conducting user research
It’s really difficult to design any product which is part of a bigger ecosystem without understanding the context in which the product will reside. And hence I decided to use Contextual Inquiry to approach the research.
A couple of examples from one of the users during the session described what happens during the process of scheduling a meeting internally
People generally don’t see other’s calendar sincerely before scheduling any meeting — Context being that people are usually aware of their schedule but while scheduling a new meeting with other person, they tend to forget checking if that person has free slot or not. This could give an insight towards a functionality that indicates availability of other guests while adding them in a meeting.
Melbourne wale k sath set krna ho to by default it should pick uske yahan itna time ho rha hai if I am putting my time — Context being that they need a timezone viewer before setting up a meeting. Currently they use google to view different timezones and accordingly they schedule their meetings.
A couple of examples from one of the users during the session described what happens during the process of scheduling a meeting externally
We use google. Hum google pe likh dete hai “if 1PM in India, what time is it in California” — Context being that before setting a meeting with external clients, first they prefer to see what time is it there. So that they can match their schedule before planing the meeting.
We tell them both the time, then we wait for their reply on mail. If they agree then we create invite if not, then again we google time — Context being that before setting a meeting there is too much back and forth. One has to first send suggested times, both user communicates this on mail or WhatsApp. If one disagrees on suggested time then again they google other time for respective timezones. All this leads to a very lengthy and time consuming experience.
Identifying the current flow for setting up meetings externally
Based on the above interview, I identified a generic workflow of a user trying to set a meeting with international guest. Here’s a diagram representing the various screens/touch points and steps involved.
Extracting insights from the stories/statements made by the users
The step was to listen to the audio recordings again and extract any piece of information that might help me understand the context better. I extracted the insights/statements on to sticky notes in order to set the stage for the next process which is affinity mapping. The following are the statements from the 3 users.
Affinity Mapping to make sense out of all the data
Now that we do have a lot of data, it’s important to make sense out of it all. In order to do this, I categorised the insights into various buckets of affinity. This gives a higher-level picture of the insights.
After this I got very interesting insights about the problems and also couple of design ideas suggest from the user-existing scenarios.
Based on the above ideas, here are some features & functionalities that I think one can expect from the design solution
- Timezone Viewer within the system
- Toggle between External and internal meeting
- Add multiple location
- Send suggested time for approval
- Notify me when all accepted
- Google invite with all details (System generated)
- Reminder
- See person’s availability while adding
- Pre-filled timezones for all offices
Choice of Platform
Although there was no specific platform mentioned in the assignment. I think it should be a web platform. Since all the employees work on their respective PC/Laptop remotely.
Wireframes
Setting meetings internally
Setting Meetings with external clients
Final Designs
I have used Figma to create all wireframes & final screens.
Internal Meetings Schedule
External Meetings Schedule
Conclusion
Here is what I learned from doing this case study:
- Scheduling meeting in multiple time zone can be really challenging. Before this assignment I had no Idea how people actually go through all this process, but now have a much better understanding on the topic. Although the proposed design solution might not be the best, but I tried to give my best to create one different experience for the target user.
- Always talk to the real users. If you have good reasons and understand what the usability issues are, start planning! Get to know your real users — user testing is the key. Collect as much user behaviour data as you can, then analyse and categorise them to make sure you have solid qualitative data to support re-design thinking. Follow the cycle of design, release, get user feedback and iterate.
