Remote work — A wicked problem

UX UI Design Bootcamp Ironhack — Week 1

As Designers we want to solve problems! As future UX UI designers we looked at one of the big challenges of 2020.

REMOTE WORK

“How Might We help people and/or companies to shift to remote and build a healthy and productive routine around it?”

Where do we begin…?

A topic like the challenge of remote workers is a huge one… and it’s personal! To prevent that we just designing for ourselves, we used different research tools, to first look at some objective data.

SURVEYS

After an initial quick desktop research, we constructed a survey to send out to people and look into the subject matter. To construct the survey, we used this great “Lean Survey Canvas” by Chris Thelwell:

FIRST RESULTS

The biggest surprise of the survey was, that many respondents answered that they would be more hesitant to take breaks at work due to their “fear of being behind in work”.

The stressed out feeling of “I am behind” from our Survey (Source: Author)

We also found out, that it was not so much about not taking a break at all or forgetting about it. Most people did report that they take a regular break. The difference is the feeling of being behind rather than the habit of not taking breaks. This behaviour may therefore not show up in the amount of breaks but rather in stress levels or ultimately sick days.

Most people do take regular breaks! according to our from our Survey (©Petra Kuehnle)

This answers to another question is surprising, but it emphasises what the most common challenges are. Here we have social isolation and communication with colleagues most frequently amongst the top 3 challenges.

Most common challenge of remote work according to our Survey (©Petra Kuehnle)

From the Surveys, semi-structured interviews and our initial online research, we gathered all the different type of issues on digital sticky notes.

Affinity Map made with web application mural.com (©Petra Kuehnle)

We each voted on issues and the “Fear fo being behind in work” and “Social isolation” where voted on the most. When we had 2 topics instead of one, we suddenly saw an insteresting link between the two and formulated a more specific question to focus on:

“HOW MIGHT WE…?”

“How might we reduce the negative effects of isolation on feeling behind in work?”

We believe reducing isolation for remote workers during work hours will achieve better health scores & higher engagement with colleagues. We will know we are right when the people are reporting low stress levels, are taking breaks and engage regularly with their colleagues.

Empathy

To spark our imagination, we used Persona’s and an Empathy Map. One of the outcomes was that could distinguish between users may report in a survey and what they see or hear. From the persona’s we could extract the different type of pain points and frustrations of different characters that may be relevant for the design of a solution.

Empathy Map made with our group (©Petra Kuehnle)

Brainstorming & Sketching

With all the information in mind that we had gathered so far, we started brainstorming & sketching. We agreed on building a platform that incorporates the work progress with the social aspects in a balanced way. But how? … we kept sketching, asking feedback, refining our sketches… and asking feedback again!

Our first sketches for the UI (©Petra Kuehnle)

Option A & Option B:

UI Sketch Option A for the first screen (©Petra Kuehnle)

UI Sketch Option B for the first screen (©Petra Kuehnle)

Rapid Prototyping

With the sketches we made some first testing.

Ui Sketch for first screen (Choosen) (©Petra Kuehnle)

Left: Group Progress, Tasks, Individual Progress, Chat —
Right:“Social Activity”, “Coffee Time”, “I’m stuck”

After a longer time without taking a break, a gentle reminder! (©Petra Kuehnle)

Virtual Coffee room with calming Environmental Sound (©Petra Kuehnle)

Concept Summary:

App Logo suggestion “Home + Work” designe by our group member Juliana Felippe (©Juliana Felippe)

“HOME + WORK” … not just an App!
Not “I am behind”… but “We are in this together!”

- Gentle reminders

- No more switching

- Clear, limited choices

We just got started & what we learned

We just got started…!

We realised that a group progress or individual progress bar may even worsen the feeling of pressure and falling behind. Each feature, each color, each size can affect the feeling of fear or the appeal to participate. It is interesting to think about the feeling of anxiety and pressure on the one hand and the appeal to participate and feel included in social activities on the other hand. These are the core issues in our scenario and basic reactions that drive human behaviour and interaction.

To further test the idea, we could make a prototype and keep refining and testing the Experience of the User and the User interface.

(Source: Author)

(Source: Author)

Thak you for taking the time to read the article. This is a group project done by Juliana Felippe, Ashley Thomson, Lera Nabokina and the author of this article Petra Kühnle.