The Case of the User-unfriendly Microsoft Outlook App
Microsoft Outlook’s app is not that user-friendly. This is a problem that everyone believes to be true and no one is talking about or everyone is talking about and no one is fixing. I refuse to believe there’s any middle ground on this as we all slough through our professional careers using the far superior but still improvable Microsoft Office suite.
Now, the Microsoft Outlook app isn’t the only email app that has issues, but it is so broadly adopted with 90 million users as of 2017¹ that Microsoft would do right by its many users to make a few adjustments to allow for a more satisfying user experience.
I know you’re thinking “how dare she say that!!” or “I don’t know what she’s talking about … I love every second I spend on the Outlook app!” but I hope you’ll hear me out.
As many of you who use the Outlook app know these are screenshots of the app as it currently is.
At first glance, it might seem as though there’s nothing off about the app’s inbox or FAQs at all (because we’ve all been programmed to find this layout to be acceptable), but, upon further investigation, I’ve come to find out that there are more problems lurking in this app we’ve become tethered to than meets the eye.
After a brutal hour or so of direct interviewing and usability testing, it was clear to me that this app is not all that it could be.
This is where I make a disclaimer about how I conducted one user interview to assess whether my hypothesis about the Outlook app being challenging was true.
Since that’s out of the way, I want to continue with the conclusions I came to to address this very serious issue of unusability.
First, I would like to suggest a couple improvements that could be made to the inbox itself. During the usability testing, I found that the user struggled to create a new contact and to a lesser degree write a new email. To make it easier for the user to start an email or add an important connection, I’d like to propose two options for Microsoft Outlook.
The first option (Version A) is to change the magnifying glass icon which currently takes you to a screen where you can search contacts or files and create a new contact to a universally recognized contact icon where you will be taken to your contacts and given the opportunity to add a new one. The universally recognized email icon that’s currently used will allow you to access your inbox and write a new email. And, finally, the search icon will move to the bottom right-hand side of the screen where users can search their inbox, contacts, etc.
The second option (Version B) is to simply add a plus button to the bottom of the screen. The plus button will then expand to present the option to create a new email, contact, or calendar event. A search bar will be added to the bottom of the screen and, again, enable users to search their inbox, contacts, files, etc.
While it was no surprise to me that the user struggled to complete even basic tasks like writing an email or adding a contact, I was struck by the configuration of the FAQs section of the app which he accessed when he finally decided to swallow his pride and attempt to use the FAQs section of the app to figure out how to create a new folder. The app currently has its FAQs divided by header. These headers are not alphabetized and it’s unclear what kind of information lives within these headers. As before, I have two ways for Microsoft Outlook to improve this portion of their app.
The first option to improve the FAQs section is to alphabetized the FAQs (Version 1). This is, admittedly, not the most sophisticated way to approach this, but might help the user’s frantic eye as it darts around the list trying to find a header that *might* include information regarding their particular concern.
The second option (Version 2) is to keep the headers in their current order, but give the user some sense of what information might be found under the header by listing a few of the most common questions answered under that header. This version will also indicate the number of articles (or questions addressed) by the header. As you can see, there are 46 “articles” related to Getting Started on Outlook and common questions that are relevant to the header are “What version of Android does your app support?” and “Do you support Hotmail, MSN, and Live?” The thought here is that you can get an idea of what might live under each header without having to click through each one.
This brings me to the end of my mini rant about Outlook, and, on the whole, I can’t complain too much about the Microsoft Office suite. However, as one of many that have no choice but to use their products I would love to see change instead of complacency when it comes to delivering a quality user experience.
[1] B, B. (2019). Microsoft Office 365 is Being Adopted and Used at an Enormous Rate. [online] Blog.goptg.com. Available at: https://blog.goptg.com/microsoft-office-365-statistics [Accessed 5 Sep. 2019].
