Know your users. Not just some users.

How well do you know your users? On the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Ben Stegink and Scott Hoag interview Laurent St-Pierre from ShareGate. What they find might be surprising, if you've only talked to users at events.

Knowing your users is one of the most important parts of product design. You might think you know them from talking to them at community events like user groups and conferences. However, how well do those attendees really represent the full set of customers?

ShareGate recently completed a qualitative and quantitative user study of their users along with interviews of industry experts to get to know their customers better. What they found might be surprising.

Migrations to the cloud are still increasing!

Scott, Ben, Laurent and I all regularly attend Microsoft industry events. We all talk to people about Microsoft software everyday. You, like us, might think that's a great way to learn about Microsoft customers and how they use Microsoft products. And, it is! However, it's not enough.

On the show, Scott and Ben ask Laurent what surprised him most after ShareGate's initial analysis of the information they collected through research. One thing Laurent didn't expect was to hear that, once again, migrations to the cloud are still increasing. And this insight is coming from someone who's companies main product line is migration software!

Customer empathy

Why is this insight so important to community leaders and product designers? It's the customer empathy!

When I'm making daily content design decisions, one of my primary references is customer data. I follow the common design mantra, "You are not your user." As a user of the software you design, it's easy to be biased by what you experience with the software. However, what's most important isn't your experience, but the experience of the users who aren't experts on the software like you and your product team. You think about the software all day. Very few of your users put that much focus on your software as you do. Customer empathy helps us challenge our bias and think about the customers

New users to the cloud

This insight reinforces the need to cater to an audience that is brand new to Microsoft 365. A lot of things change when your documents are saved to the cloud by default compared to saved locally or on a file share. In the cloud, changes are saved automatically and available to everyone you're sharing the file with. That enables collaboration and co-authoring in ways that just aren't possible on a file share. However, we can't assume everyone understands that moving to the cloud changes this basic interaction with the Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files they work in every day.

As Microsoft 365 content designers, we need to be aware of this user mindset. We need to design experiences that are welcoming to those new to cloud-based Microsoft collaboration tools. For example, Excel on the web, in Microsoft 365, now includes a prominent indication that you have a file open for editing. And, it provides a way to switch a a view only mode. Small design changes like this can have a big impact on the user experience.

For someone new to the cloud, collaboration on Excel spreadsheets is new, as well. This choice to go to a view only mode provides a safer route than the edit mode. When someone shares a file with you, switching to "Viewing" allows you to consume the contents of the spreadsheet without the worry that you might be changing "their" file. As you consume the contents of the file and understand it better, you might move to more of an "our" file mentality. Then you can switch in to "Editing" mode.

Overtime, those users will become more familiar with the new ways of digital work in the cloud. And, there are millions of users who made the transition years ago. So, one solution doesn't always work for everyone. However, sometimes a change that benefits new users also benefits existing users. Do you think this Excel example benefits both?

Conclusion

It's easy to think the cloud and real-time collaboration with Microsoft documents is familiar to people. Especially if the people you talk to go to cloud industry events. Those people are clearly invested in the cloud or they wouldn't be at the event.

That's why this type of user research is important. Designing an experience for a customer who's familiar with Microsoft 365 is different from designing for one who's mostly familiar with a different way of working with Microsoft software. If you're designing for Microsoft 365 users, I recommend giving the podcast episode a listen!

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