Project Overview 🛠️

About the Designathon

Over the weekend of 23-25 September 2022, the University of Sydney Experience Designers (SUEDE) held their annual designathon with Atlassian, in which groups of three to four people worked collaboratively and solved a given problem statement within 60 hours.

“Teams aren’t managed to their highest potential through the challenges of remote working.”

My Role

Working closely with my three teammates, I played a key role in guiding our team through exploratory research, UX/UI design, and the development of the final pitch deck.

The Solution 🚀

Introducing HeyTeam - A reimagined way of connecting teams so they can reach their highest potential through the challenges of the remote/hybrid working environment.

Main features:

1. Unplug together - be notified when the work day has ended, so the team doesn’t end up working overtime.

2. Work as a team - build stronger relationships within the team so they can be more vulnerable with / trust each other.

3. Be free from distractions - have a clearer assignment of daily tasks so the team knows what each person is working on and won’t be overloaded with tasks.

Check out our interactive prototype below:

Design Process 🎨

My team and I went through a user centred design process - conducting background and user research to first understand our users’ issues and needs to help design a solution that meets these user needs.

Empathise

Our research aimed to understand the challenges the remote/hybrid work environment had brought for managers to manage their teams and to discover factors that motivated employees to work effectively in the remote/hybrid environment. Thus, it would help us inform how we could create a better experience for the remote/hybrid working environment.

Our research process was guided by a set of research questions:

1. What do employees find most challenging when working remotely?

2. What factors will enhance employee-manager relationships?

3. How can managers manage their team more effectively?

From our research, we found that teams weren’t managed to their highest potential through the challenges of remote working. This was mainly due to:

1. A difficulty to maintain a work-life balance - Boundaries between work and life were unclear when working remotely, leading to working overtime and difficulty unplugging from work. Studies show the average remote employee worked 16.8 more days every year than those who worked in an office. (Airtasker, 2020)

2. Hard to build up trust and relationships in the team in the hybrid remote environment - The lack of in-person bonding with team members and managers created unequal experiences for each employee. Experts agree that your relationships at work can impact everything... friendly conversations should be allowed to flourish. (Airtasker, 2020)

3. Miscommunication - Due to hybrid working, miscommunication between team members, especially between employees and managers, happened frequently. And it's harder to read people in a remote context. According to Igloo in 2020, "nearly 60% of remote workers miss out on crucial information because it was communicated in-person" (Igloo, 2020)

Further insights from our questionnaires helped exemplify this:

1. Hard to stay focused when working remotely and can easily work overtime

   1. “I was disrupted by my manager because he is unaware that I am working on a task.”

   2. “I have a never ending priority of tasks from my manager…”

2. 75% of participants would like their manager to understand their work tasks better and provide a better hybrid working policy.

   1. “assign the tasks more efficiently”

   2. “transparent work arrangements and frequent offline catchups”

   3. “please don’t send me messages after 7pm, unless its an emergency”

From these insights, our team accumulated a list of user needs:

1. I want to build stronger relationships with my team so that we can be more vulnerable with/trust each other at work.

2. I want equal opportunities for remote/in-person/hybrid working employees so that I don’t have to feel anxious when I am working remotely.

3. I want to improve my concentration when working remotely so I can stay focused and complete my tasks in a timely manner.

4. I want a clearer assignment of daily tasks so my team will know what I am working on and I won’t be overloaded with tasks.

5. I want to be notified when the work day has ended, so I don’t end up working overtime.

We also developed two personas based on these user needs and research conducted:

Ideate

Following the Empathise stage, we generated a number of concepts which were based on our user research findings. A decision matrix was utilised to help objectively justify which of the three concepts should be further refined.

Chosen Concept

Based on the decision matrix, we chose Concept #2 because:

1. Intuitive and engaging: it fulfils our defined user needs the most. Building a sense of involvement and assisting work-life balance for teams working in a hybrid environment. This concept is the most usable and provides multiple functions.

2. Feasible and unique: this concept is considered one of the most realistic in terms of technicality. Moreover, it is a unique and playful concept that allows users to unplug from work at the end of the day.

User Testing

We conducted one round of user testing using the “think aloud protocol method” with five participants, who were given three set tasks to perform with our interactive Figma prototype.

Key findings included:

• participants found the UI visually appealing and welcoming and loved the avatars and “unplugging” concept.

• participants had trouble pressing the “close” button when they viewed a particular avatar.

• a few participants mis-touched avatars they didn’t want to view

• participants were unsure if they were “clocked-off” as there was no user feedback on the interface after the user pressed the button

Project Reflection 📚

What I learnt

Through this designathon, I gained valuable insights into the importance of effective time management and setting realistic goals and expectations. Developing a well-thought-out and carefully planned idea proved to be crucial for ensuring efficient and successful project execution.

I felt that the team work went well - we worked to our strengths and our team ended up winning the "Design Process and Creativity Award.”

Next steps

Considering the time constraints of the designathon, if we had more time, next steps would include:

1. More user testing to further refine our prototype

   1. Internally test our design against the Ten Usability Heuristics

   2. Internally test our design with WCAG accessibility guidelines

   3. Testing with managers from Atlassian to get their perspective on our solution

2. Add onboarding features for new employees

3. Create an Admin version of the app so that admins can create polls