[Op-Ed] Zoom Has a UI Problem
Zoom’s meteoric rise to the top of the video conferencing market makes sense when you consider that their platform is, in fact, fairly good. So far, Zoom has managed to avoid many of the pain points that plague other video conferencing solutions:
- No account is required to join a call, and calls can be joined from any platform (even from Android, iOS, and Linux).
- Call quality is excellent, even on slow Internet connections.
- The platform can be used for free by anyone and it’s easy to create an account.
- Zoom is a standalone product with a singular focus rather than an add-on feature like Microsoft Teams or Google Hangouts.
Additionally, Zoom’s user experience is good, especially when it comes to joining a meeting. It’s hard to simplify that process much further than “here, click this link”. Overall, Zoom is easy enough to use, and it manages to keep its myriad of advanced features from getting in the way of hosting simple meetings.
UX Versus UI
With that said, Zoom is still far from perfect. While Zoom’s user experience (UX) is relatively frictionless, I’m still surprised by inconsistencies that exist in its user interface (UI). In my opinion, Zoom struggles with two main UI issues: consistency and clarity.
Consistency
For one, the website shares none of the design cues of the desktop and mobile apps. Buttons don’t even share the same names: the blue “Host a Meeting” link on the website competes with a large orange “New Meeting” button in the app. The meanings of both buttons are clear upon inspection, but this means that users have to become familiar with two separate interfaces before feeling comfortable using Zoom.
Some website features don’t appear in the app, and vice versa. For example, the “Previous Meetings” tab on the website doesn’t map back to anything in the “Meetings” section of the app. Similarly, the links in the navigation bar at the top of the app (Home/Chat/Meetings/Contacts) don’t match anything on the website.
Most frustratingly, the “Schedule a Meeting” interface on the website is substantially different from the one in the app. While the website prompts you to choose a start time and duration (and only allows you to adjust those times in half hour increments), the app asks for a start time and end time. The form options themselves are labeled differently: the start time is listed as “When” on the website and as “Date” in the app. At the bottom of the form, the advanced meeting options aren’t even presented in a consistent order between the two interfaces.
Finally, weird things occasionally happen while using Zoom. For example, when I went to unmute someone in a recent meeting, the participant list started arbitrarily reordering itself every few seconds. This made it almost impossible to choose the right person, as someone else would jump under my mouse cursor before I clicked. I’m still not sure if this was an intended feature, but it doesn’t make sense that it would be.
Clarity
On the clarity side, some of the buttons in the app aren’t immediately recognizable as buttons. The Join Audio/Share Screen/Invite Others trio is the most notable example of this issue:
I’ve been using Zoom for a while now, and every time I launch a meeting I have to remind myself that those three pieces of clip art are actually clickable. Additionally, since the introductory screen vanishes once other participants join, these buttons can’t be relied upon throughout the duration of a meeting.
Conclusion
Zoom’s UI does get one thing right: every button is clearly labeled with a description of what it does. While this may not be the most aesthetically pleasing choice, it makes it easy for untrained users to get started with Zoom. For that reason alone, I appreciate Zoom’s simple and unglamorous UI, but it’s still important that it isn’t so simplistic and inconsistent that it detracts from the user experience.
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