Saving in the Browser

The best UI is invisible. We (the Fusion 360 browser client team) were tasked to create a saving experience that met the expectations of users in a browser client, but did not conflict with the experience of the desktop application. Since the data experience lives separately from the modeling product we needed to create a recovery and save experience within our ecosystem that instilled confidence in our users. We ultimately redesigned the architecture framework, adding small visual cues to instill confidence in our users that their data was safe without burdening them.

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saving

The Setup

The save status of the document in the browser version of Fusion 360 has proved to be a source of confusion for users.

Because Fusion 360 is available in desktop and in the browser there are different expectation of what the saving experience need to be met.

The desktop application requires a save to push the design into the cloud. However, the expectations of the user in a browser product is that the changes are consistently saving.

The Problem

The only indicators of "save" are the infamous floppy disk and the asterisk indicating the files is dirty.

There was no recovery strategy in place if the server crashes, internet is disconnected or session times out. In its existing status:

untitled documents are completely lost
we create a recovery save every minute
when the user opens a recovered file

The Opportunity

The save status of the document in the browser version of Fusion 360 has proved to be a source of confusion for users. Because Fusion 360 is available in desktop and in the browser there are different expectation of what the saving experience need to be met.

The desktop application requires a save to push the design into the cloud. However, the expectations of the user in a browser product is that the changes are consistently saving.

Research

Since the saving experience overlaps with the data management system I partnered with the team in charge of our data management system to gather feedback.

In collaboration with our User Experience Researcher, we set up studies to gather reactions to the current save workflow. As the domain expert, I helped establish the information we needed to gather and the workflows we expected users to run through. Our researcher ran the interviews and gathered the data to report out. The partnering team went through a journey map exercise to find the pain points in the workflows.