My role: UX Designer
Duration: March 2022 - May 2022
Team: Sara, Tim, Nicole
Tools: Figma, Microsoft Teams
Table of Contents
Project Overview
As the pandemic has shifted the population indoors and online for the last two years, we have experienced a new norm: remote work.
Though remote work is ideal for many, it can be a recipe for loneliness due to the difficulty of creating strong connections with coworkers. Feelings of isolation in the workplace can lead to reduced job satisfaction, reduced well-being, and poor work performance. According to an article by Ravi S. Gajendran and David A. Harrison, workplace relationships are found to start deteriorating if 2.5 or more days per week are worked remotely.
We chose this problem because each member of the team has personally experienced working remotely and felt similar negative feelings, including fatigue, feelings of loneliness, and a lack of social connections. We aimed to create a solution that would bring workers together naturally to improve their work performance and overall well-being.
Method
We used the 5-step Design Thinking Process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Using this method helped us understand our users and redefine our problem to create our solution.
Empathize
To better understand our users and their experience working online, we conducted user interviews and observations with 6 participants who currently work from home. I interviewed and shadowed one software developer via Zoom and one social media evaluator in person. As they went about with their daily routines, I could interact with them and ask any questions I had about their routine and feelings throughout the day.
Main Findings
- Workers struggled the most with the lack of social interactions throughout the day.
- Workers who started their jobs in person said that the number of people they talked to on a daily basis dropped by 75%.
- Workers also noted that they no longer met people they weren’t directly working with, so they were no longer meeting people in different roles.
- Workers reflected that their company struggled to create a strong company culture working remotely.
- Cameras are often turned off during meetings, which felt isolating.
- Employees missed “bumping” into colleagues.
Define
After the empathize stage, I developed a better sense of our users' thoughts and feelings about remote work. We started with an affinity diagram to sort out our insights, followed by an abstraction ladder to get to the root cause of our problem. From this activity, we found the root cause:
Social interactions no long happen by chance.
How Might We
We then brainstormed multiple "How Might We" questions and then narrowed them down to the questions we thought would be most appropriate for the next phase. The HMW that we decided to pursue further was:
How might we create ways for coworkers to connect in social forums that feel natural?
Ideate
Brainstorming
After thoroughly defining our problem, it was time to brainstorm! Based on our HMW question, we focused on various activities to bring coworkers together remotely and sketched out our ideas. Then, we used the "forced connections" method, where we took those ideas and "forced" them together to create new ideas. This method helped us get more creative and think outside of the box.
Narrowing It Down
After our initial brainstorming session, we used a 2x2 matrix to sort out our ideas based on likelihood to use and positive impact. We then used the dot voting method to vote and narrow down the ideas we should pursue further. The idea with the most points that we decided to pursue was:
Club membership points tied to incentives
Prototyping Sketches
The team sketched out solutions independently based on the idea we came up with in the previous phase, making sure to consider the insights we received from our users earlier.
We then came back together to evaluate our ideas and combine similar concepts. I proposed a monthly reward system in which users receive a certain prize if they meet a certain amount of points each month, which we kept for the final design.
Solution
We created a platform where workers can participate in social activities with their colleagues and earn points that leads to monthly prizes.
- Fun remote activities: There are a variety of activities that users can participate in to form real connections with their colleagues. There are group activities, such as Game Night and Cooking with Colleagues, and one-on-one activities, such as Speed Meet and Lunch Buddy.
- Points rewards system: Users earn a certain amount for each activity they participate in. If the user reaches the goal for the month, they can receive prizes such as company merchandise and gift cards.
- Calendar sync: When a user signs up for an activity, it is automatically added to their calendar for easy scheduling.
- Stay in touch: Users can view their recent connections and follow up if they wish.
Prototype
Using Figma, we designed a desktop app we called Remote Together.
Since many users noted that they did not want another separate application on top of the various apps they use already, we decided to implement it into Microsoft Teams. We used Microsoft's design system, Fluent, to make our design consistent with Microsoft's current look.
Test
Back to Our Users
We returned to the users we interviewed during the empathize phase to find out if our solution addressed the problem we were trying to solve.
We selected these four questions to guide the prototype discussion:
- What did you like and dislike about this app?
- What would keep you from using this?
- What do you think is missing?
- Are incentives important?
Key Findings:
Users liked the variety of fun activities (group and one-on-one) that the platform provided.
They felt that the incentives would motivate them to participate -- most users noted that they probably wouldn't use the platform often if not for the points system.
Some wording was unclear -- some were confused about the difference between "My Activities" and "Upcoming Activities."
Users wished that the monthly winning team could receive an even bigger prize.
Some were concerned about whether the platform would be part of the workday or not.
Wrapping Up
What did I learn?
This was my first group project as a part of my master's in HCI, and I felt like I learned so much about what it's like to work on a team. It was great learning and working with my teammates while we used design thinking methods to come up with creative and out-of-the-box solutions.
If I were to work further on this solution, I would do more user research in order to refine our design.