User experience (UX) design in Microsoft Teams Rooms?
What does this mean? Does it really happen in practice?
In AV, UX design is associated with control panel and GUI design. But in Microsoft Teams Rooms, UX design means something else entirely.
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought about Western civilisation, replied ‘I think it would be a really good idea’! The same applies to UX design.
My UX mentor and friend, Adam Banks of UX Study uses the attributed saying of Henry Ford to illustrate a fundamental point: ‘If I’d asked people what they needed before I made the Model T automobile, they’d have asked for faster horses’! Likewise no-one needed an iPhone before they existed.
There are many formal processes in UX design practice, but one principle is not to ask leading questions. The technique is to tease out user needs by engaging with users in a form of discovery mode.
Adam makes two further points. Google for UX designers in AV and you’ll basically draw a blank. Also, AV system designers may get briefings from managers and stakeholders, but they never get to speak to the actual users.
At this time of year in the UK, the focus on hybrid spaces turns to Higher Education as we count down excitedly to the LTSMG conference. The Learning and Teaching Spaces Management Group is for campus AV and tech managers.
Although there has been much interest in UX design on campuses and in the wider world of pro AV, for the moment things seem to be stalled.
I believe universities are missing a significant opportunity to develop IP and patents in hybrid meeting and teaching practice and technology. This could be of massive value in both improving the hybrid experience in all applications - and create significant new revenue streams. Each campus should have some form of UX laboratory (which Adam and I can help with).
In AVIXA, we’re moving forward with the new User Experience Design for Audio Visual standard (‘UXD4AV’). There are major new opportunities within the new hybrid meeting and teaching space, for some forward-looking campuses and organisations.
Posted: 3rd May 2023