Vonage meetings

Vonage meetings

Vonage Meetings combines video meetings, live collaboration and recording for small and large businesses.

Vonage Meetings video call with participant video and side panel

Product

Vonage Meetings

Product

Vonage Meetings

Company

Vonage

Company

Vonage

Role

Product Design Lead

Role

Product Design Lead

Year

2019

Year

2019

Creating a new Meeting

Creating a new Meeting

Vonage Business Cloud (VBC) is a cloud communications solution for small and large businesses. Communication is the pain that Vonage wants to solve, and naturally many customers asked for a Video Conferencing solution.

To create a new Meeting, users navigate to the “Meetings” product within VBC and click on “New Meeting”.

Meetings product view inside Vonage Business Cloud

Upon clicking “New Meeting”, a modal is displayed where the user can invite others or copy the Meeting info to share with others.

New Meeting modal to choose participants or share dial-in info
Live meeting screen with call controls and side panel

A live Meeting. Call actions can be controlled on the top part of the screen; the side panel allows the user to easily access a wide range of actions quickly.

From the moment a user is in a Meeting, the side navigation is their main tool to navigate the Meeting. In the stages that preceded GA (General Availability) we received feedback from more than 200 users regarding Meetings and made adjustments to the side navigation according to much of that feedback.

Before & After

Redesigning the Meetings sidebar

Redesigning the Meetings sidebar

The side navigation in a Meeting is critical—it’s how users can navigate their Meetings experience. There were some challenges that users experienced and we dedicated a sprint to focus solely on the side navigation.

Participants tab

Meetings side navigation before redesign, chat panel

Before

Meetings side navigation before redesign, chat panel

After

After the Alpha stage of testing we noticed that there is not enough differentiation between Participants’ statuses. We added two points of indication in the UI: Clearer separation of who is active and who is inactive in the Meeting, and if they are inactive what their sub-status is.

Invite tab

Meetings side navigation before redesign, chat panel

Before

Meetings side navigation before redesign, chat panel

After

Usability research showed navigation icons weren't a clear way to communicate to users what each tab icon represented. Icons are often thought of as ineffective labels, being very difficult to interpret correctly without training or experience, so the icons were replaced with text.

Settings tab

Meetings side navigation before redesign, chat panel

Before

Meetings side navigation before redesign, chat panel

After

Translating the Meetings Desktop experience for mobile devices

Translating the Meetings Desktop experience for mobile devices

We wanted to provide a user experience that was consistent with the conventions of Meetings for Desktop. In both cases we provided the user with a prominent toolbar through which the users can edit the Participants of the Meeting or send Chat messages throughout the Meeting.

We wanted to provide a user experience that was consistent with the conventions of Meetings for desktop. In both cases we provided the user with a prominent toolbar through which the users can edit the participants of the Meeting or send chat messages throughout the Meeting.

Final thoughts

Final thoughts

Within its first three months Vonage Meetings grew to facilitate over 100 Meetings per day growing at a rate of 15%. Meetings reached a significant milestone during Covid, as many worked from home and needed an integrated video conference solution for their company.