Microsoft Teams : A qualitative usability study

Abstract: Working together at distance is no easy thing and the usability of the digital workspaces used is of utmost importance. Companies providing these digital workspaces constantly needs to evaluate the usability to find problems and improve their product with design principles for designing interactive systems. The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge of the usability of the digital workspace MS Teams. There are several methods for usability evaluation but the most fundamental is to test with real users, a usability test. The method used to evaluate the usability of Microsoft Teams is a usability tests with participants as close to the intended end-users as possible and with post-test interviews after each test. During the usability test the participants were observed whilst using the product and thinking aloud. Thinking aloud is the participant, while using the product, continuously think out loud which gives the researcher an opportunity to understand how the participants view the product and to identify any misconceptions they might have. The main results show that there are several usability problems with Microsoft Teams especially during the log on process and with changing output source. At the same time the results show that sharing files and calling are some of Microsoft Teams strengths in regard to usability and that the perceived usability of Microsoft Teams is high.