The goal of this project is to provide users a seamless way to share, discuss and co-edit email. I worked as the design lead and I am the patent owner of this feature.
A seamless way to share, discuss and co-edit email.
Competitive feature for Lark mail to acquire customers.
High NPS score, well received by stakeholders; acquired new customers.
Design lead | Patent owner
In 2019, we designed email product in Lark office suite from 0 to 1. Based on research data, we defined email collaboration as our main product strategy and competitive feature which differentiates our email product with other email clients.
Lark is an office suite which includesinstant messaging, Docs, Calendar, andmuch more.
+ Use Lark for internal communication while use email for external communication.
Email collaboration has been defined as a product strategy. We conducted rounds of research to validate this user need and initiate this project. Based on research data analysis, our target users would like to get their job done more efficiently. They need to communicate with different kinds of internal stakeholders and external people. In this process, they need to discuss emails or co-edit response, as needed.
In this process, our target users use Lark to discuss email contents with internal stakeholders and use email to communicate with external people.
To discuss an email, she has to forward emails or screenshot email content and send to IM groups.Once there is a new email message, she has to do it again.
She needs to discuss the email and co-edit response in IM groups, then put response back to email. If it's a long response, she needs to create a doc to co-edit response and put it back to email.
Information is not organized and everywhere. It also makes it very hard to sync up information with a team member or a stakeholder.
During the process of analyzing user journey and their pain points, we defined 3 user types, and created 3 personas based on it.
We brainstormed ideas, prioritized ideas, and decided to provide users a seamless way to share their email thread, discuss and co-edit email. We need to have system thinking, to provide a holistic solution that provides good user experience for all the three user groups.
We invited target users to workshop, and discussed about how sensitive an action is. Based on the workshop insights, we designed the permission control system.
With the permission control in mind, we designed a MVP version and developed it by reusing Lark docs codes. We released it to a selected group of target users and collected data and user feedback after a period of time. Overall, users appreciate this feature and the permission control. However, we got some new findings.
We redesigned the sharing flow. We released it to another group of users and compared data. We got a double-digit DAU increase. 28% users chose to send to chat.
To protect owners' privacy while fostering collaboration. we have permission control of viewing messages, co-editing drafts and sending out messages.
We tried different proposals and got user feedback. Unless what our competitors do, we provide users a discussion panel, so that they can choose whether to open it or just focus on emails.
+ Need to review messages or edit my draft while discussing with team members.
+ Email content is the core information.
+ Users are discussing an event; each email message is a piece of info. So they need to have the option for continuous discussion.
+ Built in feature in instant messaging is helpful.
Users can discuss emails while co-editing drafts. The built in features in chat could help foster discussion and a seamless collaboration.
In this process, we developed lark mail design system. We reused the same color palette, font to ensure the platform consistency. There are some specific components that we need to develop for email products, e.g the attachments, the thread layout for different states. We designed these components when needed and formed our email design system.
We designed the success metrics from the beginning. We measured the success from both user side and business side.
In this project, I managed interns. I not only guided them in this project. I also care about their career path and helped them explore their design potential.
