Emojis, Stickers & GIF's
Bringing fun self expression tools together in Teams
The Teams mobile app had a "fun" problem; The sending of stickers, GIFs, emojis, or memes was each treated as an individual flow, which created unnecessary complexity and made the experience of sharing something fun with friends or colleagues extremely tedious.
My Impact
Two months post launch: - GIF usage increased - Sticker usage increased - No loss of Emoji usage This project started with a conversation I had with my PM during standup about how frustrating it was to find and share a GIF or Sticker quickly. I put together a concept and pitched it to my team the next week, leadership okayed me taking it further as a full project.
Two months post launch: - GIF usage increased - Sticker usage increased - No loss of Emoji usage This project started with a conversation I had with my PM during standup about how frustrating it was to find and share a GIF or Sticker quickly. I put together a concept and pitched it to my team the next week, leadership okayed me taking it further as a full project.
Define & Discover
My team recognized this may be a problem immediately, but we wanted to validate the experience across the user base before committing to future work. Partnering with Data Science, I got usage data for each of the individual "fun" services and saw some surprising patterns • Memes had a near 0 usage rate, close enough that Data Science put it at 0% • Emojis held the top spot for popularity, followed by GIF's • A recent feedback survey we had sent out weeks prior included frequent complains from users struggling to find a GIF or Sticker they were looking for
My team recognized this may be a problem immediately, but we wanted to validate the experience across the user base before committing to future work. Partnering with Data Science, I got usage data for each of the individual "fun" services and saw some surprising patterns • Memes had a near 0 usage rate, close enough that Data Science put it at 0% • Emojis held the top spot for popularity, followed by GIF's • A recent feedback survey we had sent out weeks prior included frequent complains from users struggling to find a GIF or Sticker they were looking for
Our Competition
Looking at the big names in messaging apps (Messenger, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp) I saw a clear pattern. Give users all the types of content they could want in one place, and let them choose. This structure was shown to be effective across all of our main competitors and was also frequently mentioned in feedback surveys. I build a competitor analysis for my squad to review and moved forward with a clear direction of centralizing our content into one space.
Looking at the big names in messaging apps (Messenger, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp) I saw a clear pattern. Give users all the types of content they could want in one place, and let them choose. This structure was shown to be effective across all of our main competitors and was also frequently mentioned in feedback surveys. I build a competitor analysis for my squad to review and moved forward with a clear direction of centralizing our content into one space.
Conceptualizing
I explored two main patterns, vertical scrolling grids (adopted by Discord & Twitter) and horizontal scrolling rows (adopted by Messenger). Grids offered more room to showcase the awesome content you could pick from but were focused on one caategory. Rows gave more flexabilty to show all our content (Stickers, GIF's & Emojis). This is also a good time to mention we removed the meme generator due to low usage. We tested both directions and came back with wins for both sides. Testers loved having all the content in rows for easy navigation but struggled more with searching content compared to the grid pattern. I opted to take the best from both worlds, ...
I explored two main patterns, vertical scrolling grids (adopted by Discord & Twitter) and horizontal scrolling rows (adopted by Messenger). Grids offered more room to showcase the awesome content you could pick from but were focused on one caategory. Rows gave more flexabilty to show all our content (Stickers, GIF's & Emojis). This is also a good time to mention we removed the meme generator due to low usage. We tested both directions and came back with wins for both sides. Testers loved having all the content in rows for easy navigation but struggled more with searching content compared to the grid pattern. I opted to take the best from both worlds, ...
The right provider
The last piece of the puzzle for GIF's and Stickers was our provider. Teams had used GIPHY as our provider but when I explored the variations in results for simple results like birthday, high five or pizza it was immedietly clear Tenor offered higher quality and higher resolution results. When my team shipped the revamped fun picker we shifted our provider to Tenor, accounting for a portion of the positive receiption of our new experience.
The last piece of the puzzle for GIF's and Stickers was our provider. Teams had used GIPHY as our provider but when I explored the variations in results for simple results like birthday, high five or pizza it was immedietly clear Tenor offered higher quality and higher resolution results. When my team shipped the revamped fun picker we shifted our provider to Tenor, accounting for a portion of the positive receiption of our new experience.
It was very rewarding to work on a feature that brought more fun to the platform and continued us on the path of bringing joy for users chatting with friends and coworkers.
Based in Seattle, Washington with my partner and an eternally angry cat.
Copyright © 2023 Sean Fitzmartin
Based in Seattle, Washington with my partner and an eternally angry cat.
Copyright © 2023 Sean Fitzmartin
Based in Seattle, Washington with my partner and an eternally angry cat.
Copyright © 2023 Sean Fitzmartin