Sessions is a videoconferencing platform that allows users to host seamless, efficient meetings.

During my time at the UX Writing Academy, I worked with fellow students to audit and reimagine the Sessions website’s copy. Our work was broad-ranging, touching everything from onboarding to accessibility. I loved getting a behind-the-scenes look at a new product and a chance to put my skills to use in a new, exciting context.

Here are a few of my contributions:

User Interviews & Conversation Mining

My peers and I conducted research to learn more about existing Sessions users’ goals and pain points. We relied on user interviews and conversation mining to gather data.

I interviewed one of Sessions’ beta testers. We discovered that:

• Overall, the subject’s clients are impressed by his use of the platform, despite occasional glitches
• The subject reported a substantial learning curve (~1 month) when onboarding as a beta tester
• The subject has a direct line to the company’s founder, ergo his onboarding experience does not reflect that of a more standard user. Furthermore, he may have a higher tolerance for bugs or confusion than the general population. Additional research is needed
• The subject still lacks clarity about how attendees experience the call
• Favorite features: Agendas, resources, notes, separation of chat/questions
• Pain points: Altering agendas mid-session, building custom or stand-alone agendas, distributing recordings, connecting with guests before/after calls

Through conversation mining, we established the following takeaways:

1. Customers are looking for a good balance between extensive features and ease of use, both of which help users feel/look professional during meetings
2. Engaging participants starts before the meeting begins, and continues after, which also came up during the user interview
3. A common frustration with videoconferencing platforms is poor audio/video quality and “heavy” apps that slow down computation speeds
4. Products with multiple use cases need to be highly customizable
5. The most important tools must be the easiest to find. All the tools in the world won’t help you if you can’t locate them