A critically important consideration for new features is how we illicit user engagement. How do we promote this new functionality to our users? How do we define who would be most interested in a certain feature, and how can we promote it at a relevant and convenient time.
Previous discoverability call outs
Outlook had a discoverability problem. Every feature team was prompting callouts all over the product in an effort to boost user engagement. Sometimes users would get multiple callouts in a single session. We needed a better way of funneling these notifications into a unified system and surfacing to users in a coordinated and considerate time. We also needed to set some principles and governance around what component should be used and when.
We developed a system that throttled notification so that users would only ever receive one teaching moment per session, and on a cadence that would not cause a user to be repeatedly disrupted. We also created a range of different teaching moment components that feature teams could leverage along with guiding principles and criteria for usage.
Spotlight - a highly disruptive teaching moment reserved for features that will have a significant impact on users
Illustrative block callout - a more subtle teaching moment used for displaying additional contextual information about an item on the screen
In-line illustration callout - a more subtle teaching moment used for displaying additional contextual information about an item on the screen
in-context cards - used to introduce new concepts in an experience which you want to be visible but not disruptive