Teams vision

Teams vision | 2024

Overhauling Teams for a smoother experience

The Teams feature, introduced in 2017, has remained relatively unchanged. As our customers continued to expand and evolve, it became evident that the feature was no longer adequately meeting their needs. As the DRI for Teams, I was tasked with leading a comprehensive redesign effort.

My contributions

Research synthesis, user flows, design vision, content writing, product strategy and roadmap, stakeholder communication

Team

Senior product manager
Tech Leads
FE and BE engineers
UX researcher
Cross-team stakeholders
Design manager

Challenge

Revamping Teams for better user management

Our investment in user management naturally led us to focus on improving the Teams experience. As feature requests and challenges mounted, it became evident that Teams needed a major overhaul.

Key challenges faced by customers included:

Misaligned Expectations: Teams were often used incorrectly, leading to inaccurate data and complex routing.
Confusing Structure: Admins struggled to understand Team relationships and access.
Inconsistent Experience: Teams could be selected in multiple places, causing confusion and errors.

To address these issues, we need a more comprehensive approach to user management that empowers admins with better tools and visibility.

Process

Understanding the role of Teams

To envision the future of Teams within HubSpot, we began by mapping its current position within the broader ecosystem and its relationships with other objects. This analysis provided a solid foundation for understanding the feature's potential and identifying areas for growth.

To gain a deeper understanding of user experiences and identify opportunities for improvement, we conducted a thorough analysis of existing UXR-led research, customer feedback, support tickets, and roadblocks. This analysis shed light on the challenges and pain points faced by our users, providing valuable insights for our future development efforts.

We analyzed the potential effects of the Teams redesign, pinpointing impacted areas and key stakeholders within the company.

Enhancing team alignment

HubSpot's team functionality offers a valuable tool for organizing and aligning teams, but the concept itself can be somewhat ambiguous. To enhance support for our customers and align with our business strategy, I conducted a competitive analysis to understand how other companies approach team collaboration.

This matrix visually organizes the findings from the competitive analysis, categorizing the data by type, segment, and functionality.

Prioritizing investments for our customers

To cater to the evolving needs of our upmarket customers, we strategically prioritized enhancing the depth of our User and Team management features. By addressing critical pain points in Team implementation, such as Reporting & Data tools, Routing, and Notifications, across the platform, we aimed to deliver a more consistent and effective customer experience. To identify where our investment would yield the greatest return, we meticulously analyzed existing workflows related to key pain points.

By mapping out the core flows, we gained a clear understanding of how the Team feature was integrated into the overall system and identified opportunities to enhance the experience through a consistent flow.

Simplifying complexity with Object-Oriented UX (OOUX)

OOUX was instrumental in simplifying the intricate relationships within Teams and enhancing the user experience for key tasks. By using OOUX, I was able to concentrate on the core purpose of the system, which helped me design actions and tasks that were centered around the essential 'things' users needed to do. This created a more intuitive and efficient user interface.

By mapping the relationships between core objects, we understood the data flow and potential requirements.

Solution

Future-proofing Teams

To anticipate the evolving needs of our customers, particularly in the context of upcoming cross-team initiatives, we sought a solution that could adapt and scale alongside them. We aimed to develop a connected team management system that is flexible, comprehensive, and seamlessly integrates across the platform. Our vision was focused on solving the three main problems we identified: usability, adoption, and consistency.

Team scheduling based on user working hours

Execution

A phased approach to building value

Understanding the scope of the Teams redesign, I collaborated with our PM and engineering partners to develop a phased approach. This plan prioritized key improvements while minimizing disruptions to our customers. By breaking down the project into manageable phases, we could deliver value incrementally and gather feedback throughout the process.