WORK FROM HOME - BUDDY
A wellness app for employees working from home
My Role: UX / UI Designer and Researcher
Tools: Figma, UX Tweak, Google Forms, Miro, Google Scholar
Techniques: User Research, Design Thinking Process, Empathy, Ideation, User Journey, Persona, How Might We, Digital Wireframe, Usability Testing, Hi Fi Mockup, Survey, Usability Testing
Design Process
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Testing
01
Empathize
In Depth Interviews
In-depth interviews was chosen as my primary research method. The target of the research was to understand the hypothesis declared after desk research related to communication software's UI, the theory related to zoom fatigue and to empathise with users to find user needs and pain points and thus understand user journeys better.
In Depth Interviews Results
The data collected from the study was categorized in the form of user needs, their pain points, current strategies to deal with the problem, and technological problems related to VC software. The data was recorded, and notes were taken at the time of the interview process.
User Persona
A consolidated persona has been established to demonstrate users' suffering while working remotely. The exhaustion faced by video conferencing software impacts mental health, productivity, and performance.
User Journey Map
Employee Journey on a typica day of Work From Home
02
Define
WHO
Analyzed both secondary and primary Research
Define the most common points
Define problem statement using 4W method
Problem Statement
WHAT
Tom is a busy executive who needs an interactive portal experience to reduce the effect of video conferencing because he feels fatigued, stressed, and disconnected while working remotely.
WHERE
WHY
02
Ideate
Determine the approximate direction of the solution.
Create the maximum number of possible solutions.
Identify the most approprate solution that can be implemented and tested in later stages of the design process
How Might We - HMW
Various "how might we" (HMW) statements were developed for a web application based on multiple user requirement statements derived from secondary and primary research to evaluate various approaches to meet user needs.
HMW
Enable teammates to create social connections?
Book/ join team calls showing activities going to happen?
User Need Statement
Josh, a Senior Manager, recently joined a team and desired to connect with the team as he had never met his team officially. He wants to bond with the team and to know them better to have a better workplace environment.
HMW
Book/ join team calls showing activities going to happen?
Join Various clubs as per hobbies/choice to connect with like-minded people?
User Need Statement
Mathew, who plays football, would like to know if any teammates also play football or if there is a football club within the company to join the club and play with them.
HMW
Encourage mindfulness during working hours?
Meditation info and suggest moving or changing position?
Show exercise information?
User Need Statement
Max, a back-end developer, feeling tired and distracted after writing a hundred lines of code, wants to have a small break and attend some mindfulness session to feel refreshed and regain his focus.
HMW
Enable users to check on themselves?
Show exercise information?
User Need Statement
Miles, a Scrum Master, spends between 5 and 6 hours per day on calls; he wants to book a do not disturb slot for him once a day to have a break from continuous calls and perform some activities/exercises according to his mood.
Sketching Solutions
The Crazy 8 method in the ideation phase to get ideas flowing for the design problems I encountered through our How Might We statements which this project needs to solve.
Decision Matrix
While addressing the many needs of the user, a prioritization matrix is used as a systematic, objective approach that aids in achieving collaborative understanding. To have a clear idea of the criteria of what needs to be considered in the final design. I have used an impact effort matrix that plots relative user value against complexity. It goes well with the design thinking process. The problems and solutions discovered earlier were prioritized using two primary criteria to rank features that can be further implemented, their impact on the user, and the efforts required to implement the feature. Depending on the user's needs, available alternatives, and the degree of the item solutions' pain points, a feature's impact on end users will vary. The level of effort that is the amount of time, energy, and resources needed to tackle the issue required will increase as the item's technical complexity increases.
Lo-Fi Wireframes.
Hi Fi Designs
Organizational Norms / Guidelines
Connect with Peers
Health and Tips
Technical Proposal
Microsoft Teams has provided a feature to add your ideas to applications. These applications can be of vivid types as apps provided by M.S. Teams, by external services such as tabs, bots, message extensions or their combination, thus expanding the value of M.S. Teams. The videoconferencing software provides a personal app that enables one-on-one communication and a shared feature that can be used as a collaborative platform. M.S. Teams has provided a Teams developer platform to build apps to fit user requirements. A new or existing application can be created and merged by the user.
​From the build environment options, you can choose from the road map to build and deploy a Teams app.
I am proposing a solution by using a few of the features mentioned above from the M.S. team's developer toolkit, such as Personal Apps, Tabs, etc. A web application developed using any web technologies like React, Angular, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It is hosted on any cloud platform like Azure or AWS, and should be integrated with M.S. teams using Personal Apps and Tabs feature provided by the video conferencing software.
Technical Implementation for distinct screens
1. Organizational Norms / Guidelines - The Microsoft Teams design and development toolkit will be used to build this webpage. The guidelines and norms will then be retrieved from the organization's database using their APIs.
2. Connect with peers – The content of this webpage will also be built using the M.S. Teams design & development toolkit, which will use the organization's and user's data from M.S. Teams to display relevant data to the logged-in user. To book a time slot in the calendar for the host/joined event, it will also use the M.S. Outlook API.
3. Health & Tips – It can be a separately running/hosted webpage, which can be embedded as external content into M.S. Teams Tabs, according to the tracked mood.
Usability Testing
Usability testing is one of the best ways to determine whether a design will be successful, thus I utilized it as my test technique. The study set out to determine how practical, effective, and sound the online application was for the employees to use in order to lessen zoom fatigue and improve well-being when working from home, as well as how effectively the design was functioning.
Test Execution
The test was conducted by recruiting participants through social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. A sample size of 5 participants was recruited to test the website's functionality.
#KPI's
Task Success Rate
01
Behavioral KPIs
Time On Task
The task success rate was chosen to measure the number of tasks performed correctly
This KPI, is the time a user takes to complete a task successfully.
02
Attitudinal UX KPI
System Usability Scale (SUS)
The application's usability was then calculated with a list of questionnaires given to participants to estimate its effectiveness. A user successfully achieves their objective, energy, and satisfaction –the user's satisfaction. The post-study questionnaire was taken reference from the Standford University Research Paper to calculate the Zoom Exhaustion Scale.
Test Evaluation
This section will discuss the output of the study conducted in this research. It describes all the conducted tests in detail and assesses their outcomes.
Over 90% participants reported that it was simple to comprehend the core objective of the application, with 60% giving it a rating of 5 and the remaining 40% giving it a rating of 4.
About 60% of participants reported feeling emotionally and cognitively exhausted and dreading having to perform things after participating in video conferencing.
About 80% of participants said working from home makes them feel disconnected from their coworkers, and they seek a platform where they may participate in and host social activities and events to socialize with other colleagues
​Over ninety percent of users indicated a positive overall experience with the application and gave a rating of 4.2 out of 5.
Task number vs Success Rate
Task Number vs Average Time Taken
Number of participants vs Questions
Key Takeaways
Doing Remote Testing was helpful since the application is designed for WFH employees hence employees were able to connect and provided real feedbacks.
Microsoft Teams provides one of the easiest ways to integrate your existing web apps with Teams through “tabs".
Whats Next ?
A video tutorial to guide the application
A feature to remind the time to book for yourself
Provision to book productive hours for employees.
To Add Voice assistance in the application.