Designing the ViewSonic Microsoft Teams Rooms Solutions Configurator

Launched in 2024

ViewSonic has hundreds of different products and needs an easy way to present them to customers.

“I want to build a meeting room that can fit 6 people, but I’m not sure which products best serve my needs.”

ViewSonic has a fleet of excellent sales people, but the large number of SKUs makes it hard for customers to get started on their own.

  • ViewSonic has over 200 SKUs, many of them having fulfilling similar needs and having multiple generations.

  • It is not realistic for us to create a landing page or infographic that can meaningfully include each use case.

Beginning in 2023, I worked with a small team - one 3D modeler, one vertical marketing manager, and two software engineers - to tackle this problem. Our team’s mission was to create a reliable and effortless configurator that would cover almost all of our end users’ scenarios.

Understanding the differences between our products was often cumbersome and frustrating

Before diving into any wireframes, we wanted to first understand the current user journey and overall experience. From interviews, observations, and website audits, I learned the following:

  • Comparing different products is tiring due to the sheer volume of products and the different functions each product has (touch screen, built in OS, android vs windows, etc.) It’s an exhausting experience unless you are already familiar with our products.

  • Even if you know our products, it’s difficult to picture which products would work best for different use cases. (Huddle rooms, large meeting rooms, training rooms.)

  • While most customers can reach a sales person to get the guidance they needs, many users wanted a way to have an idea of which products they wanted before having that first contact.

Example of the sheer volume of products we have.

Before doing any serious wireframing, we scoped the MVP to be a configurator that provides a simple and intuitive solution for building out meeting rooms:

  • Prioritize for the majority: Prioritizing the most common uses cases. There will always be exceptions, but the configurator is meant to be a starting point, not the end goal.

  • Feel intuitive every time: The configurator should display what the user is thinking and the user should gain a greater understanding of what ViewSonic can provide.

  • Be scalable: While the configurator only supports enterprise customers for now, it should eventually be usable in education and consumer spaces.

Goal and guiding princples 

Designing the user flow

From research insights, we consolidated four key steps while using the configurator. Getting started, choosing a room, choosing the products, and completing the form.

Outcome and learning

The configurator was released very recently, but we have already received positive feedback from users.

“This new configurator feature is really good. It lets me know what I’ll need to build the rooms I’ll need. - User

“I wanted to have a basic idea of how much a meeting room cost, and what products I’d need to actually build it. The interface was easy to use and did exactly what it needed to!” - User

Thinking beyond the configurator’s MVP

In the current state of the configurator, only our enterprise users can build the exact type of room they need. My goal is to expand this tool to be available for all of ViewSonic’s potential customers. So, what’s next?

  • Focusing on education: Many of ViewSonic’s products have use cases in the classroom. Creating a tool that shows our products within different class sizes, price ranges, and learning environments would allow our education customers to have an easier time understanding how we can help.

  • Consumer based configurator: A consumer based configurator would be a much more difficult task as each room is unique and has more variance than a work or school setting. However, I would like to create a tool that shows different home office, gaming, and home theater set ups in the future.