Week 7 🗓: 25 May - 29 May
Brief 🔍
Design a way to counter some of the alienating effects of remote working online.
Teammates: 🤝 Pat, Lee and Ann
This week we all agree to go deeper into the "A new browser page = Your missing page" idea. And adapt the new page into worker home. We divided our work in order to also start doing the digital part. Pat, Ann and Lee was responsible for the physical part, to think about other activities that can run by using the browser masking tape idea. And I was responsible for the digital part, to think of the user flow and wireframe for the website, application and plugins.
Recaps of our project idea
Our project is about creating share moments for the creative team. And we create a product name called as “Sharmen” this week. It included the digital and physical experience. I love this brand and product name, which sounds like a short term of "Share Moments". I also designed the brand logo to match the IBM style.
In the digital part, we will have a website, application, and plugins to help to link with the physical experience. For the Physical part, is our main focus, we will have a toolkit and physical experiences.
Digital: Website + Application + Plugins
We target to drive people to download our plugin into any video conferencing application like zoom. Therefore, I was designing the website to introduce our product and let people download the application and plugin. Below is the wireframe.
Also, I was doing the web branding design, which we aligned with the IBM style. For the plugin design, is still in progress, we will update next week.
Website Demo
Physical Toolkit
For this part, it is the most challenging part for us. We target to drive people to subscribe to the physical toolkits on our website. There are various versions for people to subscribe and it can also be a platform for other team building business to sell their toolkits in order to create sustainability.
Below is the idea for the standard toolkit that we propose. Inside the toolkit, there are one browser page masking tape and 3 different physical clickers with 3 different interactions.
Activity 1 - Drawing: Secret Workmate
The first activity is the one about drawing that I already proposed last week. It is called "Secret Workmate". This activity is random matching for the whole team. Everyone will receive a drawing challenge alert. Each one has a chance to draw for their teammates. People will be curious about how people think they are and their impression, and through discussion they have to find out their secret workmates. Below is the storyboard recap to demo how it works.
Activity 2 - Drawing: User Manual Quiz
This activity aims to let people share their working preference. We think of some question like below:
Condition I like to work in
My preferred office hour
Best way to communicate with me
The way I would like to receive a feedback
Things I need (ex. I need to have a short brain break at least 2 times a day)
How I learn best
Things I struggle with…
Thing I love
My personality trail
Activity 3 - Watering: Growing Plant for your teammates
This activity aims to create more sharable topics and trust-building through helping teammates to grow a plant. We hope it can help them to discuss more and having some real physical items to interact so they can be easier to have sense of belonging.
Activity 4 - Scanning:
This is a sharing session hosted by each colleague in a rotation format. The host could use one of the clickers to scan and share some physical objects via our digital plugin. It aims to use sharing physical items in a conversation to let them talk and share more. Below are some topics that we think of:
Share one of your unforgettable travel experiences.
Share a skill that you have.
Share your biggest childhood fear.
Share your favorite food/snacks.
Share your happiness moment in life.
Share your passion.
Share your favorite outfit.
Here is the storyboard demo how it run:
Project feedback & Reflection 🙌
This week was a very busy week, we all work hard to generate ideas. It is because we already spent a lot of time in ideation and prototyping. I just worried about we don't have enough time to execute them in a better way. However, after presenting our ideas, some of our idea of the activities were banned. I felt a little bit upset but I know we can do better! It is because we also agree with the feedback that our professors and classmates gave us. They suggest us to narrow down the physical toolkit and activity into just two main ideas. It will be more clear to present our idea. I also agree that now we all have a lot of different ideas but all of them are too complex. People will find it hard to follow. Therefore, we have a meeting to discuss how to narrow down our idea. And, finally, we had some good direction about sharing physical items at your home and creating topics in a "Sharmen Museum". I think it is a great breakthrough in our project. Please have a look at the next blog for further progress.
References 📖
Fapohunda, T.M., 2013. Towards effective team building in the workplace. International Journal of Education and Research, 1(4), pp.1-12.
Fried, J. and Hansson, D.H., 2013. Remote: office not required. Random House.
Ingold, T., 2013. Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge.
Rudani, R., 2013. Principles Of Management. New Delhi: McGraw Hill Education (India), p.761.