Yammer Redesign - ProductTank SF June 2015
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What we've learned (so far) redesigning a 5 year old web app. Talk from the June 2015 ProductTank SF meetup.
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Yammer Redesign - ProductTank SF June 2015
- 1. Niіck Fassler, PM @ Yammer JЈune 2015
- 2. Redesiіgn (verb, rē′dĭ-zīn′) the act or process of changiіng the way somethiіng looks, iіs made, or works
- 4. “It will speed up how quickly we can improve the product and user experience, letting us focus more on forward progress and less on fixing bugs”
- 5. “We continued trying to make incremental changes to the overall style, but couldn’t guarantee that a change we made in one area would work in all instances”
- 10. Push back… “We have iіmportant/urgent features to buiіld” “IІt wiіll take too long” “We should iіncorporate redesiіgn iіn ALL our projјects” “We should refactor duriіng ALL our projјects” “IІt may not help our core engagement metriіcs”
- 11. Push back… “We have iіmportant/urgent features to buiіld” “IІt wiіll take too long” “We should iіncorporate redesiіgn iіn ALL our projјects” “We should refactor duriіng ALL our projјects” “IІt may not help our core engagement metriіcs” “We’re moviіng slow because of our current desiіgn” “We can buiіld thiіs iіteratiіvely” “We don’t make tiіme for redesiіgn iіn our MVP culture” “We don’t make tiіme for refactoriіng iіn our MVP culture” “A redesiіgn can help us make a strategiіc shiіft”
- 13. Goals 1. IІmprove future velociіty (eng/desiіgn refactoriіng,UIІ kiіt) 2. Strategiіc shiіft to focus on a group-fiіrst naviіgatiіon 3. Declutter and users focus on core features Constraints 1. Miіniіmiіze UX/feature changes 2. Buiіld iіteratiіvely
- 21. What we’ve learned (so far) • Reframe the goals (redesiіgns aren’t to make your app look “pretty”) • Understand the tradeoffs you are makiіng (declutteriіng may mean removiіng features) • Constraiіnts are necessary What we hope to learn • Can we get there iіteratiіvely? Wiіll we ever be “done”?
- 22. Thanks! Read more… Quora Redesiіgn: http://blog.quora.com/New-Desiіgn-on-the-Web-A-Foundatiіon-for-the-Future RelateIІQ Redesiіgn: https://mediіum.com/@heatherjјacket/moviіng-faster-by-startiіng-over-431e874a4a7d Spotiіfy Redesiіgn: http://www.theguardiіan.com/busiіness/2014/aug/03/iіnsiіde-spotiіfys-redesiіgn Facebook Redesiіgn: https://mediіum.com/@jјoulee/whatevers-best-for-the-people-thats-what-we-do- ed75a0ee7641 Yammer: https://mediіum.com/we-are-yammer Follow me: @niіckfassler
Editor's Notes
- Hi, I’m Nick Fassler, a Product Manager at Yammer This talk is about what we’ve learned (so far) redesigning a 5 year old web app Late last year we began a process to completely redesign our web app This is our core product which has been iterated on for over 5 years with 100's of features and pages, used by millions of extremely passionate and opinionated users
- So let’s talk about redesigns. Every good talk should start with a definition [Definition] When I’m talking about redesigns, we’re talking about complete product redesigns (not just individual features)
- But despite this large scope, it seems that everybody is doing it.
- This is the redesign that Quora completed in Mid-2014. It seems simple, but they changed a lot of architecture, navigation, and did a bunch of refactoring. And here’s a quote I like by Quora’s Director of Design David Cole http://blog.quora.com/New-Design-on-the-Web-A-Foundation-for-the-Future
- Here’s RelateIQ’s redesign, also from mid-last year And a quote from Heather Phillips, a designer at RelateIQ… Right after this redesign, they were acquired by Salesforce…coincedence? https://medium.com/@heatherjacket/moving-faster-by-starting-over-431e874a4a7d
- But before we get too excited about the outcomes of redesigns… Here’s another example from Secret, right before they shut down
- And this was Facebook’s very contentious feed redesign they worked on for over a year, which they decided not to roll out There were also examples recently from Airbnb, and you could even say that Google’s Inbox is a redesign of Gmail to get them past current constraints
- We’d been following all these redesigns and of course we were jealous, and wanted our own So, I wanted to ask you: How many of you have worked on a complete redesign of the product you are working on? [ASK AUDIENCE] Q: How many would like to? [ASK AUDIENCE] That’s what I thought (hopefully)…it seems any app over a year old gets to the point where you want to start from scratch
- So, let’s start at where we were This is the Yammer web app. What does it make you think? [ASK AUDIENCE] Cluttered? Confusing? Not sure where to focus your attention? Facebook? Yes, all of those things. We knew all that, but this is what happens over 5 years a/b testing lots of individual features and building MVPs Problems with current design:
- But, despite our frankenstein web app, we still got lots of push back when we talked about a redesign Probably some of things you’d expect (or maybe have even heard yourself…or worse, said yourself) Important/urgent features projects that have clear user behavior changes, hypotheses, outcomes Engagement should change engagement metrics? Problems are more about big shifts of users, alienating users
- But we thought…
- And we were already running into issues like this This is an example where we tried to build a new thread card feature, and incorporate components of redesign along the way But ultimately this failed, even after three separate attempts. We realized we couldn’t make iterative design improvements without holistically rethinking our core product
- So we came up with some goals and constraints to help frame the redesign, and to convince the team that this was worth prioritizing [LIST] And with this frame, we were able to get an initiative prioritized and funded to redesign Yammer Next, we gave our design team a couple of months to explore and consolidate on a new design direction, Design/front-end development slowed down because of need for refactoring Strategic shift to focus more on groups and teams
- Styleguide
- This is what they came up with. Big improvement right? Our next step was to figure out how do you get there from…
- …here. So wanted to build the navigation changes first, but relied on: new grid, new typography, new color
- Grid and typography Wasn’t an iterative improvement, it didn’t reach MVP…it was a bad experience. just helped us refactor, so we decided against this approach
- 5472 total lines removed # of shades of blue?