Windows Focus

Role

UX Designer partnering with teams across Microsoft, User Research, Engineering, PM, Content, Creative Direction

Summary

With much of users’ lives moving online in the pandemic, digital wellbeing and focus became more challenging. Interruptions and distractions were coming from notifications and visual noise. Finding time to get work done became more difficult. These problems were amplified for people who are neurodiverse, particularly people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We set out to help users set aside time for uninterrupted, deep focus.

Context and Challenge

I discovered through previous research and user feedback that Windows focus assist was not well understood. It existed as a tri-state toggle in quick settings and users were confused by what would result from these three states.

Distractions were difficult to recover from. Notifications were drawing users’ attention away from what they were trying to focus on, sometimes putting them into a state where they completely forgot what they were doing until much later. Flashing and badges on taskbar apps were also distracting, especially flashing from Teams messages.

The new focus sessions feature in the Clock app had recently been released and received great feedback. It made use of research-backed methods for timeboxing focus and including regular breaks, integration of Microsoft To Do, and calming audio from Spotify.

Different teams across Microsoft had isolated solutions to help customers focus but they weren’t working together across endpoints.

Goals

• Create a cohesive focus experience on Windows centered around the user rather than individual apps and features

• Reduce visual distractions from the system

• Make notification management easier and reduce cognitive load

Process and Solution

A previous designer had started to develop the strategy and early designs for what a new Windows focus experience could look like. I started by building off the work she had done and fed it into a larger design envisioning sprint that I led. The sprint team was made up of a User Researcher and designers across the Notifications and Creative Direction teams. Together we crafted a story for how Windows could both be calmer by default but also offer structured focus when it’s needed. The vision we created was fine-tuned over multiple rounds of design leadership reviews and served as a North Star going into planning with my PM.

After the envisioning sprint, I worked directly with my PM partners to get tactical on exactly what we’d go after in the 2022 release. Talking to information workers and people who are neurodiverse was key. We interviewed users about what they do to stay focused today and what the biggest distractions are for them. We immersed ourselves in past research around focus, distraction, and productivity (there was a lot!). I teamed up with designers across Microsoft to create comps to send through market research so we could gauge appetite for different focus solutions.

Because notifications were a key distractor, my PM and I worked closely with the notifications team. Early on, we uncovered the importance of teasing apart the concepts of do not disturb (mute notifications) and structured focus (make changes to the system to facilitate heads-down focus time). Because this was a departure from Windows focus assist, very clearly communicating the deltas between existing behavior and proposed behavior was crucial to get everyone on the same page.

I worked with the notifications designer to add do not disturb to notification center so that it was co-located with actual notifications rather than being housed in quick settings. I redesigned notification settings to similarly bring do not disturb into the same place as other controls for notifications.

I created prototypes to illustrate the visual and cognitive noise with focus turned off, and the calm with focus turned on. Seeing this transition in action was a guiding force in gathering feedback from users and leadership. Nailing down the exact changes that take place in this transition underwent countless iterations, balancing user needs, technical feasibility, and marketability.

The initial feature set I designed was up against technical constraints and dependencies on another engineering team that wouldn’t land in time. Other iterations aimed to make the transition more visually obvious, but we had mixed user feedback and most users were drawn to functional changes to help them focus. Where we finally landed was an experience that integrates the Clock app’s focus timer into the OS, calms down the taskbar, and automatically turns on do not disturb.

While there’s much more we’ve envisioned and would like to do in the future, this is the foundation for a focus experience on Windows that helps users get things done and improves digital wellbeing.

Results

Focus will become readily available this year, but beta feedback is already rolling in for potential improvements and praise for how much the experience is helping people. We now have strong partnerships established across the company to continue collaborating on the next evolution of focus for future releases.

In the Media

Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22557 | Windows Insider Blog

Virtual meetings are here to stay. Microsoft wants to make them better - CNN