menu controls redesign - content design

one menu to control them all

time to read (~4 minutes)

this story starts like every good design story. with a design system lead, a content designer, and a dream.

that dream being: creating a single control panel for meetings.

what kicked this off was our design system lead (Trip Carrol, he’s great) discussing current AX problems with the controls and their misalignment with the new global web library (which helps fix a lot of those issues).

which makes my brain go… “wait why are our menus the way they are?”

its like noticing the fishbowl for the first time

we just called this normal…

why are there three menus? why are some things repeated in multiple sections?

joking aside, this got me thinking. how might we fix this? can we fit everything in on menu?

so, after a little discussion and thinking, i came to 4 design constraints:

  1. combine personal audio and video controls with meeting controls

  2. make everything no more than two menus deep

  3. improve the overall accessibility and hierarchy while we’re here

  4. use the new component build for the global web library

then like most things, i started by questioning everything.

asking PM, asking design, asking engineering.

after getting a few answers, some sanity checks, and a couple “it has always been that way, idk.” i dived into mind mapping this myself.

I design in dark mode 😎 just fyi

and after a little of this with the team

i think i got to something pretty nice.

the one menu to rule them all 🙌

some major wins that came out of this after digging in

  1. by moving everything to one menu, your audio (Mute) and video controls (Stop) can just be actions, making that choice binary

  2. also by simplifying audio/video control that opens up the controls bar to be customizable and personal

  3. by implementing toggles more logically we also relieve confusion with activating breakout sessions (which activated a dialog on toggle switch… like what?)

“This feels better... I was always frustrated by how many menus there were. I get confused with the audio and video settings all the time!”
— early test user

but with all this came a hard lesson, especially with internal driven improvements.

the real fight actually wasn’t fixing the menus.

the real fight is getting others to see big problems that can be hiding in plain sight and prioritize them outside of their roadmaps and customer requests.

so the fight is ongoing 💪