Challenge Summary
Welcome to the "Talent Cloud Experiences Powered by Microsoft Teams Concepts Design Challenge". Following a successful concepts challenge for exploring involving crowdsourcing and collaboration with freelancers within PowerPoint, Microsoft is back with another exploratory challenge, this time for Microsoft Teams, which is a service offered within an Office 365 business subscription to help teamwork. We are looking for your help in creating high fidelity concepts for an easy to use workflow within MS Teams from discovery to delivery of projects leveraging talent from the cloud.
Read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. Let us know if you have any questions in the challenge forum!
Challenge Objectives
Project Background
Objectives of the Proposed Functions
User Story
Bk is a business decision-maker who works as a Project Manager at an Enterprise. Bk drives programs that solve business and customer problems via technology solutions. Bk uses Microsoft 365 technology products like SharePoint, Teams, PowerBI, OneDrive and other Office 365 offerings, to accomplish daily tasks as a PM.
As an example of Bk’s daily tasks let’s consider the problem of this challenge as Bk’s new project. He has the objectives in mind, namely to integrate crowdsourcing into Teams. He would like to hire a couple of designers from the crowd to come up with great concepts for this function. Firstly he would create a new team and invite his internal colleagues he would like to work with on the project. They would discuss the details and create initial tasks in MS Planner. Based on the tasks Bk sees the need for external talent so he goes on to search for the best available experts out there. He can look up the designers, filter, sort them, look at their portfolios, reviews. When finding the right ones he can start communications with them. If the other party is interested, they can agree on the conditions and “sign” a contract. Communications would go on within Teams using MS Planner as well to assign tasks to the newly hired people. When the tasks have been finished, Bk can confirm the delivery of the work contracted for, so the freelancer would get paid. Bk would have the option to rate and write a review about the freelancer, that would help other users to find the best match for their needs.
Design Considerations
Screen/Function Requirements
We want the following user flows covered in a high fidelity concept design:
2. Discovery Flow
To be able to start the collaboration, Bk needs to find the right talent to work with on his project. The purpose of MS is not to build its own crowdsourcing marketplace, but to leverage the already existing ones, like (Upwork, Topal, etc.) by using their databases, APIs, or any suitable background processes.
What information should Bk enter in order to start searching for freelancers? How to keep this short and easy to use? For now, we have to rely on his input and judgment, but in the future, the tool could use machine learning technology to suggest the best (available and within the budget) team to work on the project - consider this when designing, let your solution be scalable into these directions.
3. Engagement Flow
After selecting the right people from the pool to work with, Bk needs to engage and onboard them to the project.
4. Collaboration Flow
After launching the project with the newly hired freelancers and also with internal employees, Bk wants to keep on communicating with the team. There are different outcomes, sometimes detours during the process.
Branding Guidelines
Please consider the below guidelines during your design process:
Target Audience
For this challenge we would like you to consider the Project Manager, and design your screens for this role. Other user roles are:
Judging Criteria
Your submission will be judged on the following criteria:
Final Deliverables
Marvel Prototype
We need you to upload your screens to Marvelapp.
Submission & Source Files
Final Deliverables
For submission you have to upload a zip file that contains the following 4 files:
Read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. Let us know if you have any questions in the challenge forum!
Challenge Objectives
- Creating a new version of MS Teams that offer the user a frictionless way to find and engage freelancers from “the crowd”.
- Show the flow outlined in the brief (Marvel hotspots are important)
- Desktop screens of 1366px width.
Round 1
For Round 1 please provide as many screens you can for the following flows to be able to show our client your concept along with a clickable prototype on Marvel- 1. Welcome Screen
- 2. Discovery Flow
- 3. Engagement Flow
- 4. Collaboration Flow
Round 2
For Round 2 please provide all the following screens and flows along with hotspots on your prototype.- 1. Welcome Screen
- 2. Discovery Flow
- 3. Engagement Flow
- 4. Collaboration Flow
Project Background
- Microsoft Teams is a hub for teamwork offering several types of communication styles (individual and group chat, online meetings, calls, etc), built-in Office applications (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Sharepoint), task management with MS Planner, integration of almost 300 Microsoft and third party services. At last but not least the service is being offered in a secure, compliant manner that is crucial for enterprises. It is crucial that you familiarize yourself with Teams first, so we invite you to sign up for a free version of the tool to research the environment and the current services offered within. In addition, you can find tutorial videos on the MS Teams Help Center. We also attached some introductory videos on the forum.
- If we consider the end-to-end management of any project we usually have to use a number of different products, tools for communication, production, reviewing, task assignment, you name it. In addition, the rise of the gig economy also pushes people to learn and use different crowdsourcing platforms. Why not bring all these tasks under one hood? Microsoft identified the need for this and believes that they can make project and team management with freelancers much easier and more effective.
Objectives of the Proposed Functions
- The goal of this project is to design a discovery, workflow, and collaboration experience within the Microsoft Teams app
- Increase productivity by making talent engagement easy by removing the friction caused by using independent tools and platforms.
- Offer a one-stop hub for secure and seamless teamwork including freelancers in the workflow.
- Conveying trust both for enterprises and freelancers.
User Story
Bk is a business decision-maker who works as a Project Manager at an Enterprise. Bk drives programs that solve business and customer problems via technology solutions. Bk uses Microsoft 365 technology products like SharePoint, Teams, PowerBI, OneDrive and other Office 365 offerings, to accomplish daily tasks as a PM.
���Bk likes/wants
- The flexibility and mobility to work from anywhere (MS Teams is being offered for mobile devices as well)
- A way to discover talent (internal as well as external - freelance) and content required to complete a specific task or project
- An ability to keep track of everything that is going on with his programs, health of his projects and upcoming milestones. Basically, a simple way to manage his project with relevant stakeholders
- An ability to safely collaborate with internal as well as with external parties
- A way to communicate with the talent before assigning them to work on a task/project (hiring)
- A way to lookup details around his past projects, similar projects completed by others within his org, ability to re-use project content, plans or definitions
- An easy support mechanism like a chatbot or voice-enabled integration to augment the experience
As an example of Bk’s daily tasks let’s consider the problem of this challenge as Bk’s new project. He has the objectives in mind, namely to integrate crowdsourcing into Teams. He would like to hire a couple of designers from the crowd to come up with great concepts for this function. Firstly he would create a new team and invite his internal colleagues he would like to work with on the project. They would discuss the details and create initial tasks in MS Planner. Based on the tasks Bk sees the need for external talent so he goes on to search for the best available experts out there. He can look up the designers, filter, sort them, look at their portfolios, reviews. When finding the right ones he can start communications with them. If the other party is interested, they can agree on the conditions and “sign” a contract. Communications would go on within Teams using MS Planner as well to assign tasks to the newly hired people. When the tasks have been finished, Bk can confirm the delivery of the work contracted for, so the freelancer would get paid. Bk would have the option to rate and write a review about the freelancer, that would help other users to find the best match for their needs.
Design Considerations
- We need you to think outside the box for this project, this concept is something new for users, so how would you make the features easy to use, easy to discover?
- We need to clearly see the necessary amount of screens and interactions to take Bk from point A (discover his options) through point B (engaging with the talent) to point C (delivery) in a frictionless way.
- Apply design principles that help with removing questions users might have during this experience. How would you make it self-explanatory?
- The design should incorporate the existing UI/UX components and collaboration features (E.g. Planner board, Teams/Channels/Tabs, Interactive Cards, Message Extensions, Chat Bots) within Microsoft Teams.
- What’s the simplest way to integrate the power of the world of remote workers into the application? Note, that Microsoft is not looking into creating a crowdsourcing platform, they would like to leverage the existing ones.
- The current user story is limited to finding designers, but you need to think of more complex projects where different skills (like developers as well) are needed, so make your solution scalable.
- We expect you to deliver between 15-18 unique screens, plus any necessary variations to help showcase the sparkles of the interactions.
- Bonus: can you produce a video that showcases Bk’s journey for the flow? That would be a significant asset for us to present the idea.
Screen/Function Requirements
We want the following user flows covered in a high fidelity concept design:
1. Welcome Screen
- How would the addition of the talent cloud experience change the landing screen of the app?
- Think about the process of engaging users to this new collaborative tool or its features.
- The current version looks like this. We would like to remind you that we do not care about the fact the design style doesn’t match MS branding perfectly. We care about interaction and the ideas you can propose.
- Bk would start to build up his “team” in the regular way, adding employees he would like to work with on this project. Together they can set up some tasks already which they’d like to follow in MS Planner. Based on these tasks they realize the need for additional people to involve in the project.
- How can Bk start to look for talents according to the project’s needs?
2. Discovery Flow
To be able to start the collaboration, Bk needs to find the right talent to work with on his project. The purpose of MS is not to build its own crowdsourcing marketplace, but to leverage the already existing ones, like (Upwork, Topal, etc.) by using their databases, APIs, or any suitable background processes.
What information should Bk enter in order to start searching for freelancers? How to keep this short and easy to use? For now, we have to rely on his input and judgment, but in the future, the tool could use machine learning technology to suggest the best (available and within the budget) team to work on the project - consider this when designing, let your solution be scalable into these directions.
- What is the best way of looking up internal and external freelancers for the project concerned?
- In what ways the app can aid Bk in selecting the best match for his purpose?
- Based on what Bk can sort the available freelancers? Ratings, reviews, portfolios should help him make the best decisions.
- How budget management vs. freelancer pricing would work?
3. Engagement Flow
After selecting the right people from the pool to work with, Bk needs to engage and onboard them to the project.
- We need to let the team and the individuals identify and communicate the scope and tasks to drive the project to success.
- Pricing and rules should also be defined and agreed on, so as deadlines by both parties.
- If both parties agreed on the terms, Bk can finalize the hiring process. In the background, Teams would utilize the APIs of the respective crowdsourcing platform for hiring, by which the contract will be signed by the parties.
4. Collaboration Flow
After launching the project with the newly hired freelancers and also with internal employees, Bk wants to keep on communicating with the team. There are different outcomes, sometimes detours during the process.
- Show us a couple of steps of the collaboration flow.
- What happens if the collaboration goes wrong, someone cannot deliver? How Bk can fill in the gaps? What happens to the dismissed freelancer (stats, reviews)?
- When the freelancer delivered any assets he has been asked for, how can Bk confirm the delivery, and how he can give his feedback to the freelancer concerned.
Branding Guidelines
Please consider the below guidelines during your design process:
- Fonts and colors open to suggestions as long as they are in line with the design goals.
- There’s no need to match the application look to the current version of MS Teams. We DO NOT care about the look; instead, it’s the interaction design we need to focus on.
- Stock photos and stock icons are allowed from the approved sources, as long as you declare them.
Target Audience
For this challenge we would like you to consider the Project Manager, and design your screens for this role. Other user roles are:
- Current and future Microsoft Teams users from basic businesses to large enterprises.
- Freelancers offering a wide variety of services through online marketplaces.
Judging Criteria
Your submission will be judged on the following criteria:
- Overall idea and execution of concepts.
- How well you plan the user experience and capture your ideas visually.
- How well you implement the challenge requirements.
- Creativity and ease-of-use is key to success as it must be engaging to users.
- Cleanliness of screen design and user flow.
- Out of the Box Thinking
Final Deliverables
- All original source files.
- Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop and saved as a layered PSD file, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch or Adobe XD
- Marvel prototype
Marvel Prototype
We need you to upload your screens to Marvelapp.
- Please send your marvel app request to pere.viktoria@gmail.com
- To be able to showcase your design to the client please provide hotspots on your prototype.
- You MUST include your Marvel app URL in your declarations.txt (in your marvel app prototype, click on share and then copy the link).
Submission & Source Files
Final Deliverables
For submission you have to upload a zip file that contains the following 4 files:
- Source.zip – All original source files.
All source files of all graphics created in vector format in either Adobe Illustrator or any similar software should be saved as editable files.
- Submission.zip – PNG/JPG files
Submit JPG/PNG image files based on the Challenge submission requirements stated above.
- preview.png – Your preview image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72 dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.
- declarations.txt – All your declarations and notes
This file must contain your notes if any, fonts used, links to the stock images and icons used and the link to your Marvel project.
Please read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. It is important that you monitor any updates provided by the client or Studio Admins in the forums. Please post any questions you might have for the client in the forums.