Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
— Cicero
Over two decades, hundreds of studies have documented the social, physical, and psychological benefits of gratitude. Many of these benefits have direct relevance and value to the modern workplace:
- Gratitude strengthens our relationships, improves our health, motivates us to achieve our goals, and boosts our feelings of satisfaction with life.
- 93% of people agree that grateful bosses are more likely to succeed.
- 88% of people say that expressing gratitude to colleagues makes them feel happier and more fulfilled.*
Research has also found that people are less likely to feel or express gratitude at work than any other place. On a given day, only 10 percent of people say “thank you” to colleagues — and 60 percent of people report that they never or very rarely express gratitude at work. The result is that too many people are feeling unappreciated and taken for granted at work. Organizations as a whole are missing opportunities to create healthier, more fulfilling workplaces.
Challenge
The question I faced was: Can I design a web solution that encourages expressions of authentic gratitude at work, benefiting employees and employers?
I couldn’t— not without my team. This was a group effort so I would like to express my gratitude to Nathan Maus and April Jarstad (both UX designers) for their contributions and dedication to this project. I had a lot of fun working with you guys and was honored to share this experience with you.
Research
Phase One of research began with listing our initial assumptions and creating a hypothesis of what we expected to find. We also made a list of things we were unsure of. We agreed that we needed to speak with real people about their experiences and wanted to talk to employees in different roles working in various industries. We also wanted to talk to someone working in a Human Resources role to get their perspective and find out if they were using any tools designed specifically to encourage or inspire gratitude.
We began conducting interviews and sent out a survey. We took care in crafting our questions because we did not want our assumptions to influence our participants in any way. We also considered the context of our in-person interviews and took steps to make them feel comfortable and appreciated.
Next, we started compiling the data from our 46 survey respondents and our 5 in-person interviews and sorted them into four categories: demographic data, goals, frustrations, and motivators. From this information we began to get a better picture of our prospective user. We called him Justin.
Justin’s goals were clear: he wanted to feel more engaged, connected, and appreciated. He felt frustrated about the lack of transparency within management and lamented the isolation he felt being on a small team. He wanted to get to know his coworkers better. He believed that if he had more positive personal interactions at work, he would be more productive and happier.
Working with our Persona we created a User Story Map. This was a helpful exercise as it allowed us to identify specific tasks that Justin would need to complete in order to achieve his goals of being a more engaged employee. From this, our design solution was born. Thanks, Justin.
Planning
With our user research results, academic studies on gratitude, our understanding of the different ways people like to be rewarded, and the knowledge of our competitor’s designs, we began sketching out a solution that would:
- lead to employees engaging with each other more often
- encourage and enable them to express their gratitude publicly, and
- offer them ways to meaningfully reward each other through thoughtful gift-giving.
Since our survey respondents had different preferences regarding the way they wanted to be rewarded, we developed a short survey to be completed during the onboarding process that would allow users to indicate their preference for either public or private appreciation and what types of rewards suited them best.
Instead of offering a cash-based reward program we decided on a platform that allowed employers to allot points to their employees. Employees could redeem these points for physical goods or gift cards in the site’s Store, but not for themselves — items “purchased” in the store were to be gifted to coworkers only, for specific reasons related to performance, teamwork, or outstanding contributions. Additionally, each employee would have a profile page where they could publicly display how they wanted to be recognized and what Store items they desired.
Our solution, which we dubbed “Gratico,” would be an employee engagement platform that encouraged employees to learn more about each other through their public profile pages, express their appreciation for acts big and small, enable them to plan get-togethers, and ask questions via a message board thereby increasing transparency and job-related knowledge. Since we knew that simply observing expressions of gratitude increased the likelihood that the observer would feel gratitude themselves we decided to make these interactions visible to everyone on the platform.
Design & Testing
We started by making a Feature List and Site Map. Using the 10 X 10 method we explored several different design approaches. We agreed upon a layout and produced low-fidelity wireframes for the site.
Once wireframes were completed, we prototyped them using InVision. The feedback we received from our volunteer testers led to some important alterations — namely the elimination of the Feedback button located at the bottom of the right navigation bar, and the relabeling of the Q/A Page to “Questions.”
The function of the Feedback button wasn’t perceivable to any of our users. It was removed entirely and the term Q/A turned out to mean different things to different people. To us it was “Questions & Answers” and to others, it was Quality Assurance or nothing meaningful at all. Changing the label to Questions helped resolve this issue.
User Interface Design
We wanted our product to feel lighthearted and upbeat. Blue was our primary color because it is associated with communication and trust. Yellow was chosen to elicit a cheerful attitude and happiness. Orange encourages adventure and creativity.
Working on the Visual Design aspect of this challenge was one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. It was exciting to watch our design transform from low-fidelity to high-fidelity mockups and, finally, a working prototype.
Result
The high-fidelity prototype turned out simple, familiar, and attractive. We wanted to ensure our solution followed the 10 basic principles of Interaction Design so we asked a few more people to test our final prototype.
Observing others use our product was gratifying for a few reasons:
- We had used design to solve a real problem for real people.
- It looked good.
- It was usable.
The challenge was to use Human Centered Design principles to solve a problem — in this case, a lack of gratitude in the workplace. Conducting research by interviewing and surveying potential users of our product revealed their frustrations, motivations, and goals. We were able to design a solution with these things in mind. Testing our solution on actual users revealed where it failed and why, and allowed us to fix potential problems early.
The result was a carefully designed product, backed by research, and delivered fast.
Try it for yourself!
Summary
The question I faced at the start of this project was, can I design a solution that encourages expressions of authentic gratitude among employees, employers, and teams everywhere?
Part of that question will go unanswered since this was an exercise. Success was measured by observing others using our product and listening to their feedback regarding usability and interface design. If this application were to be deployed, I would account for business needs and define specific KPI’s (such as the self-reported satisfaction of employees, objective measures of productivity, and retention rates).
The more personal question was, can I design? As an experience designer, this was an important way to test myself. It gave me confidence in the design process and reassurance that I have the required hard and soft skills to work as part of a team to accomplish a goal. I learned that I am a strong research planner, copywriter, and interface designer. I used my interpersonal skills to listen, compromise, delegate, motivate, and build trust.
The three weeks we had to deliver this solution was valuable experience working within an Agile framework. This was also a good opportunity to practice the entire user design process. (I challenged myself to scribble it out from memory before writing this Case Study)
In sprint two of this project I would focus on: creating thoughtful microinteractions ensuring a delightful daily experience, an encouraging and unobtrusive onboarding process, and finally, I would do a more thorough competitive analysis.
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Thanks for reading!
