Overview

Interacting with others is a human experience that each one of us craves. To have meaningful conversations with people who value our opinions and share our common interests is undeniably fulfilling. Unfortunately, in the corporate workplace, this human need is often neglected in the pursuit of productivity and growth. However, research suggests that neglecting the social needs of employees will only hinder the performance of a company in the long term. But how can you strike the right balance between social satisfaction and productivity?

The 9-5 Can Be Lonely

Our team and I did extensive secondary research into this problem space. We did in fact find that given the trending focus on productivity and efficiency within the corporate world in recent years, workplaces can in some circumstances overlook the social needs of their employees. One sample survey of over 2000 employees across six different countries revealed 82% of employees say they have ‘felt lonely’ at work (EY Consulting, 2022). Moreover, 2 out of 3 executives are concerned workers may quit their job given how disconnected they feel at work (Airspeed, 2022). Creating a work environment where the social needs of the employees are satisfied is beneficial to all stakeholders. A report based on 10,000 Australian workers concluded that “connectedness” and “supportive relationships at work” are one of the five key drivers of a thriving workplace (AFB, 2018).

Digging Deeper

Our team and I formed research questions based on the extensive secondary research we had conducted to address the crux of this problem area. We sought to conduct primary research building on this background research. Our primary research questions were as follows:

• Is social interaction in offices valuable, and to what extent?

• What kinds of social interaction are most fulfilling to people (in general)?

• How has remote work impacted social behaviours in the in-person offices?

• What prevents workers from having a positive social experience in their office job?

Connection Is Key

Our team and I conducted over 50 surveys, 9 interviews and 9 contextual observations. We triangulated our methods to ensure we had a diversity of behavioural/ attitudinal data, as well as qualitative and quantitative data. We analysed all of our qualitative data into a large affinity diagram and various aspects of our quantitative data to reveal some key findings regarding this problem space.

After abstracting all of our findings from our affinity diagram, we uncovered the top level revealed several intriguing key findings. Written from an individual’s perspective, we found that:

• Socialising, both inside and outside office hours with work colleagues gives me a sense of belonging to a team and satisfaction within my job

• I feel comfortable to socialise because the people and physical layout of my workplace is conducive to a healthy social environment

• I feel I am not able to have natural social interaction at work due to the stigma around social interaction, primarily centred around the need to be productive

• I generally value meaningful social connections with people who are similar in age and have similar interests

• I have found that working remotely makes it difficult for me to interact in both a social and productive capacity with my co-workers

Quantitative data further revealed that 26–35-year-olds were significantly more likely to mix their work life and social life. We also found that females had an attitude that was much more open to socialising at work, compared to their male counterparts.

Based on these findings our group and I created three personas and three storyboards as a way of visualising our user and possible solutions they may have to the given problem scenario.

What Can Be Done?

Our team formed a single problem statement:

“Socialising is a key aspect of an employee’s sense of worth and belonging to an organisation within the context of an office. Office employees tend to value social interaction that relates to their identity (be it hobbies, interests or talking to people who are at a similar stage of life). However, the stigma around socialising, as well as the unconducive physical spaces of some offices can inhibit an employees’ ability to fulfill these needs.”

And created several personas and storyboards to humanise and empathise with a user that represents the needs we had uncovered. 

At last, we began to ideate how we might go about solving this problem now that we had a rich and detailed understanding of the user and their needs.

We came up with three distinct ideas from using the Crazy8s, brainstorming and challenging assumptions.

• Our first idea was a phygital noticeboard which connects to an app. This noticeboard/ app would have a list of available social events and the profiles of people attending.

• Simple app to allow people to easily swipe onto upcoming social events. Organised around a virtual table there will be different people’s faces organised into activities happening around the office.

• The Workplace Matching App forms user groups based on age and interests, facilitating the organization of themed activities during lunch hours to foster stronger workplace connections.

After establishing some common criteria which was important in addressing our chosen problem statement, our team and I created a decision matrix. We found that our ‘workplace matching app’ was the most effective in addressing the most important criteria relating to our problem space. As such, we decided to move forward with this idea, hereafter naming it CollabConnect.

CollabConnect

We fleshed this idea out further, primarily focusing on the two key findings adjacent. We found it especially important to focus on facilitating genuine, and deep social connections through common interests

CollabConnect is an app that places corporate office workers into social groups that revolve around common interests and hobbies. It utilises data inputted by the user to create these groups and then creates events within these groups to help facilitate social connections with office workers in the same building/company. It aims to reduce stigma around socialising in the workplace and allow for natural, interesting conversations.

Wireframing & Changes

We first created some very lo-fi sketches of what our app may look like and then some mid-fidelity wireframes of the interface.

We tested the usability of these wireframed designs with both experts and regular users, using cognitive walkthroughs and the think-aloud method. The testing of our desktop and mobile design revealed numerous important insights. Given this testing, the following changes were made:

• Adding a search bar to the interests page

  • Relatse to findings that people want specific things that they are passionate about

• Want to be able to preview event attendees before signing up for the event

• Add more info about upcoming events

• Design changes on the profile/ settings page

Prototyping & further testing

Following the wealth of feedback we received, our team and I created the interactive prototype of our design. Certain features on desktop & mobile were given priority in order to be ready for expert testing. The decision to prioritise desktop for the creation of an account was based on our personas. We found that each of our given personas were busy and did not want to be distracted by their phones at work. As such, we sought to test the sign up feature more predominantly for the desktop display, to ensure users would not dismiss signing up to avoid going on their phone at work.

The features we tested were:

• Creating an account

• Joining an assigned group/ event

• Commenting on an event

• Changing the break time

• Searching for an event or group

Expert Testing

In analysing our expert testing data, we discovered inaccuracies in heuristic labelling. Instead of grouping findings by heuristics, we opted for a feature-centric approach, acknowledging mislabelling trends by some experts. Using a top-down method, we reversed the card clustering technique. Collating expert feedback, heuristics, and severity ratings for each app feature, we identified common pain points. Through systematic discussion, we moderated severity ratings based on individual comments. This process informed prioritized, frequency-driven changes to enhance app features. The shift from heuristic-centric to feature-centric analysis revealed nuanced insights and facilitated targeted improvements. 

The main points of change and feedback at this stage were:

• “‘your groups’ sounds like I’ve already joined this group already”

• “the dark colour palette is a bit inconsistent with the other parts of your app”

• Followed more established design patterns on save button and profile image

• Some details of the event were lacking

• The map did not resemble usual design patterns used e.g google maps

• The calendar icon was useless

User Testing

After we made these changes revealed by expert testing, we tested our prototyped designs on users. Using the think aloud method mapped with post-test questions and our SUS evaluation, we were able to gain rich user insights into the needs of the everyday user.

A synthesis of the total SUS scores of the nine users we tested revealed that our overall usability score was 76. This is categorised as above average. However, there was still numerous pieces of feedback that were revealed through our think aloud tests that required fixing in the third iteration of our app design.

Think aloud tests were separated into different features of our app. When analysing our findings from these tests, we created an insight grouping, abstracting the raw data into higher level findings under each feature of our app.

Following the synthesis of these changes, the final changes we made to our app included:

• Refinements to the event chat

  • Changing “comments” to “event chat”

  • Adding a ‘delete comment’ button

  • Adding the ability to react using a thumbs down emoji, in case you wanted to show some kind of negative response to a message

• Search bar refinements

  • “Struggled to figure out how to get search results once they have typed in information”

  • We found that abandonment rate on this task was high in user testing

  • The average time users spent looking at the screen was between 4-5 seconds

• Progress bar on the signup page

  • Multiple users commented that this progress bar was “clunky and thick”

  • We implemented a new sleek visual design

Final Walkthrough

Although the iterative design process can go on ad infinitum, after this round of testing, feedback, and implementation, we felt we had a prototyped app that we were proud of. See a demonstration below of both the desktop and mobile version of CollabConnect.

Reflecting

Although we faced some limitations in achieving diverse user testing, primarily due to time and sourcing constraints, our project excelled in the realm of visual design. Our team's proficiency in crafting aesthetically pleasing mockups and prototypes, paying attention to small details like logos and adhering to consistent brand guidelines, ensured our app aligned with industry standards. However, challenges emerged when addressing valid user feedback within the constraints of AdobeXD and Figma, impacting our ability to implement dynamic break-time adjustments and prototype every profile/settings page item due to time limitations.

Expert testing was also a strong point of our design process. Engaging with experienced UX designers forced us to transcend mere aesthetics, focusing on refining user flow and prioritising overall usability. The importance of extensive, iterative testing and the need for a crystal-clear focus on a given problem scenario are a few of the many valuable takeaways I took from CollabConnect. I am looking forward to applying these lessons to my future projects.