Background and Problem
Microsoft Office Lens is a mobile phone scanner application with some advanced features. Office lens is able to create vectors from shapes in a picture, convert pictures of documents into word documents and even read aloud from photographed documents. At the time of this project an Android, iPhone and Windows versions of the application were available.One of the most requested features on user voice was to provide an iPad version of Office Lens.
The goal of this project was to optimize the Office Lens mobile app for the iPad.
Role and Ownership
Worked as a Program Manager on the Office Lens team.
As a Program Manager I was responsible for design, user research, market research and project management. I created detailed business justifications for each feature I worked on including estimated impact on usage metrics. I was also responsible for managing the official Twitter account to promote new features and recruit user testing participants. Presented updates and new feature ideas to the rest of the Program Management team at biweekly meetings. Final designs were communicated to Graphic Designer for approval.
Tools
- Microsoft Powerpoint for wireframing
- InVision
- User Voice
- App Annie
Process
User Research
Read user reviews and submitted feedback on sites such as User Voice. Used personas created by previous interns to understand user characteristics. Recruited users for user interviews to better understand what they needed the iPad version for. Designed and conducted the user interviews, which resulted in better defined user personas.
Market Research
Researched competitors iPad applications and reviews to understand what features users liked or disliked. Used App Annie and Google to understand how to phrase the app description to make it higher in search results with other competitors.
Requirements
Requirements were written based on the resources available to work on the process as well as results of user and market research.
- Must take advantage of the added screen real estate of an iPad
- Must be consistent with the iPhone experience to reduce learning curve
- Must allow users to easily scan single page documents
- Must allow users to easily scan multiple page documents
- Must require minimal development effort
Solution
You can see the app on the app store here.
Next Steps
- Track usage metrics and telemetry to understand how users are using the app.
- Follow up with user testing participants on the app design
- Add new iPad specific features to better take advantage of iPad functionality. Some ideas include, advanced editing features such as annotations and brightness adjustments.
- Experiment with different UI’s to expose current features that are getting lost such as the factorization and read aloud features.
