Experience Design @Adobe
Designing a new Adobe Acrobat experience to improve team collaboration.
role
Experience Design Intern (ui/ux design, research, prototyping, growth design)
timeline
11 weeks (May – Aug. 2021)
team
Adobe Acrobat Web (manager: Beate Fritsch; mentor: Joon Kim)
tools
Adobe XD, Miro, Usertesting.com
PROJECT OVERVIEW
What is Acrobat Web?
Acrobat Web is the browser version of Acrobat, and the youngest member of the Acrobat product family. Web allows users to easily access their Document Cloud and utilize file tools that can convert, compress, organize, share, and more. With its features growing, user growth and retention is a priority.
Project Goals 🕵🏻♀️
Understand the needs and pain points of Acrobat Web users
Design a solution that aims to increase user growth + user retention
RESEARCH
Audit of Acrobat Web
Findings presented to designers and PMs within the various Acrobat teams, including Acrobat Web, Acrobat Mobile, and more.
• Biggest opportunity 🌈 = improving team workflows and user connection in Acrobat Web
User interviews
2 surveys, 10 participants each
Conducted on usertesting.com, my surveys helped me understand document workflows through the eyes of current users and non-users.
Questions revolved around:
Team communication + collaboration
Use of PDFs and documents
Prior knowledge of Acrobat/Adobe
Social media habits + content consumption (to learn more about casual communication)
2 user tasks
Navigating the user's preferred document service
Navigating Acrobat Web
Through these interviews with current users and non-users of Acrobat, I was able to gain some insights:
I found that the market for document storage was cluttered, with many different user options not just in platforms but in devices.
Luckily for Acrobat Web, users greatly preferred using desktop or web document platforms.
And interestingly, the top 3 most frequent PDF interactions — sharing, commenting, and editing — usually involved working with a team member directly.
The greatest insight was that users overwhelmingly preferred Google Drive to any other platform.
…and for big reasons. Whether it was a work or team requirement, or a greater familiarity with Google products, a pattern of team communication and collaboration was shone.
Drive was well-equipped to connect teams and their documents, and facilitate real-time communication — and that was a reason for users to stay longer, or just stay at all.
So after all of this research, what could I do?
IDEATION
Acrobat Chat
After brainstorming around the original project scope, journey mapping, and transforming my insights into activity notes in Miro, I came to the conclusion that good work communication was an incentive for growth and a reason for retention. My solution was Acrobat Chat, a feature that could:
PROTOTYPE
Design iterations
My initial sketches of Acrobat Chat involved figuring out how a user would enter and engage in a chat feature in different places around Acrobat Web.
In total, I designed 5 iterations of an Acrobat Chat prototype.
Design breakdown
Browse below for an overview of my designs and features. ⬇️
CONCLUSION
Acrobat Chat incentivizes users to come and stay on the platform by allowing for a more productive and collaborative workflow. Acrobat is already a powerful PDF and tools platform. With Chat, is can also become a team communication hub!
Next steps
Expanding platforms
I envision Acrobat Chat being accessible through all Acrobat platforms. Users should not be limited in their communication just because one is using their phone, another is using their web browser, and another is using the desktop app. I would explore what Acrobat Chat might look like on non-web surfaces.
Due to NDAs, I am limited in how much I may publish about this project.
Please contact me for more information! Thank you! :-)