Share Session

Users had no practical way to collaborate on sessions. A remote team working across different time zones needed to pass ongoing work between colleagues — sharing progress, comments and revisions so others could pick up exactly where someone left off. The existing export mechanism was buried in the system menu, designed for developer debugging rather than user collaboration, and failed to preserve user-generated content such as comments, revisions and annotations. When users began requesting the ability to share sessions with colleagues, the existing mechanism was not a viable solution.

• Cloud-based collaboration was ruled out early — technical complexity and delivery timeline made it unfeasible for this iteration.
• The MVP approach meant deliberately scoping the solution to file-based sharing, accepting that some collaboration scenarios would not be covered in the first release.
• User access was limited — only two interviews were conducted with the requesting tenant, meaning design decisions relied heavily on engineering input and the user story provided.

Research was limited but focused. Two user interviews were conducted with the tenant who requested the feature, providing direct insight into the collaboration workflow and the specific pain points of a remote, cross-timezone team. Engineering interviews mapped the technical boundaries of what was feasible within the delivery timeline — ruling out cloud solutions and establishing file-based transfer as the viable path.

Established UX best practices were applied to ensure the interaction patterns felt familiar and intuitive within the constraints of a file-based solution.

The core structural question was how to present the import interaction — should it be a wizard, a stepper, or a single modal? A wizard was considered but rejected as overcomplicated for what is essentially a two-stage action: select a file, confirm and import. A stepper carried the same risk of over-engineering a straightforward flow. A modal was chosen as the right pattern, justified by the short duration of the import process — technical research confirmed imports would complete in under 5 seconds, making a blocking modal acceptable without frustrating the user. Early explorations also addressed where to surface the feature — moving it from the system menu to the main dashboard alongside the 'Create New Session' button established import as a first-class action, not a hidden utility.

Engineering collaboration was central to defining the scope and interaction model of the feature. The decision to use a blocking modal was informed by technical research into import duration — confirming that a 5-second maximum made the blocking approach acceptable. File validation logic, including format checking and archive integrity verification, was defined jointly with engineers to ensure the UX error states mapped accurately to real technical failure points. The MVP scope itself was a collaborative decision — agreeing on what the first release would and wouldn't cover, with a clear intent to iterate based on adoption.

Accessibility was considered throughout the design process in collaboration with dedicated A11y experts. The modal interaction was reviewed for keyboard navigation, focus management and screen reader compatibility. ARIA live regions with polite priority were implemented to ensure dynamic content changes — such as validation feedback, error messages and import progress — were communicated appropriately to assistive technologies without interrupting the user's current action. Error messages were designed to be specific and descriptive. File validation feedback and metadata preview were aligned with WCAG standards to ensure the feature was accessible to all users.