Modernizing Push-to-Talk (PTT)

Modernizing Push-to-Talk (PTT)

About Orion Labs

Orion is a voice-first enterprise communication platform connecting frontline workers and teams.

With a focus on hospitality, transportation, logistics, and field services, Orion provides cloud-based enterprise services including alert workflows, indoor positioning, geofencing, language translation, Health, Safety, & Environment (HSE) compliance checklists, and more.

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Team Members

• Head of Product
• Product/Program Manager
• UI/UX Mobile Product Manager
• UI Designer (Me!)

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Design Goal

To make voice products and services more valuable, usable, and useful for people requiring constant communication with their teams.

The Situation

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Orion wants to improve the current features in the Orion Dispatch Console. They also want to explore new features that will provide more value to customers.

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Current features

• Direct Message PTT
• Group PTT
• Message log

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New features

• Speaker indicator
• Maps
• Multimedia messaging services (text, photo, video, files)

Product Team Insights

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Prominent PTT button

• For users familiar with PTT, the interface should echo the simplicity of the device. The button should have visual prominence and exist in a discoverable location

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Learning Curve

• Dispatch platforms can be overwhelming and our users have various technological literacy levels. It's important that we create an interface that is easy to use and not intimidating.

Experience Audit: Key Findings and Recs

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User Identity

• Relying on names to identify a person might be hard for users.
• To improve findability and comprehension, we should add avatars. They also humanize the product experience.

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Contrast

• The contrast in the UI narrows only to colors and battles to grab your attention.
• We should explore other types of contrast like shape, size, and position.

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Content Scannability

• The message log lacks hierarchy which makes key elements hard to scan.
• Exploring types of contrast should help make the content more digestible.

Inspiration

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Discord

• Good usage of welcoming illustrations and clear distinctions between elements.

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Twitch

• Takes great care with its font sizing, element spacing, and contrast ratios. The viewing and engaging experience have the support of nifty expansion panels.

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UI/UX Mobile Product Manager

• Design syncs with my teammate! To ensure consistency and parallel improvements in both the native and web app.

Sketching and generating ideas

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🔨 Must haves (New features)

• Speaker indicator
• Locate members on map
• Display MMS

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🤔 Additional ideas

• Member details
• Collapse Member List
• Multi-group interaction
• Nesting member list in Groups
• Map Log and Breadcrumbing
• Search and Filtering

Wireframes (and Prototypes)

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Round 1 (View prototype)

• Toggle between online/offline users
• Structured message logs (Tabs, Filters)
• Map with avatars

Team (and Self) Feedback for Round 1

• If we have additional status types, what would that look like?
• Some of our customers will not want the map feature. How should we handle this and what would that look like?
• Explore ways to make filters more discoverable.

Round 2 (View prototype)

Final mockups

Round 1

Round 2 - Released

(Commercially available Oct. 7, 2019)

Round 3 - Released MMS messages (Late 2020 / Early 2021)

Modernizing Push-to-Talk (PTT)

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Results

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"10 Most Promising Unified Communications Solutions" by CIO Review, 2022| Orion Blog | CIO Review

The Orion Voice Platform selected for its ability to streamline frontline communications across a distributed workplace environment

G2 | Orion Reviews

Retrospective

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What went well?

• Dispatch Console shipped! Our customers find it easy to use and get a lot of value out of it while helping others.
• It’s super cool to work with engineers who have a working knowledge of (or care about) UX design principles.
• The Orion Command Center needed to go through a massive code cleanup and I was included in conversations regarding UI component libraries.
• I also enjoyed gathering feedback from the engineers when sharing wireframes, designs, and prototypes.

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What didn’t go so well?

• Imposter syndrome. I was super shocked to land a job at Orion. Every day, I felt excited and terrified so I pushed myself hard to prove I deserved to be there.

One day, an engineer asked me to go for a walk. As we chatted, they said, “You’re doing more than enough. Actually more than that.” Hearing this made me feel confident and trusted.