Week 9 🗓: 8 Jun -15 Jun
Brief 🔍
Design a way to counter some of the alienating effects of remote working online.
Teammates: 🤝 Pat, Lee and Ann
Coming to the last week, we were all very excited to finalize our project. This week, we revised our design. Everyone was responsible for a different part of the project. I was working on the digital experience and system design. Pat was responsible for the "Starter Kit" design. Lee was responsible for the "Co-Creation Kit" design. Ann was responsible for the team room design. We also filmed the user journey video to demo how it works. Overall, I was satisfied with the whole project and working with my teammates. Below is our final week outcomes.
Digital experience
As we planned to film a video to demo how the physical toolkit and activity link with our digital application, I revised the whole website and application into a softer tone and feel. And then, Ann changed the team room style into something like a messy room instead of a standard museum room. It is because we found that the museum room didn't give users a cozy feel. Therefore, we changed the website, application and team room style. Below is the finalized design.
Demo Video - Website to Application to Plugin
The basic concept of our idea is to send out physical toolkit to every colleague for some creative team building activities. At this moment, there are two kinds of physical toolkits open to subscribe. One is the Starter’s Kit and the other is a Co-creation kit. People have to download the desktop software and mobile app for uploading and sharing. In the digital software, it does not only provide video conferencing for real-time communication, and but also creates a virtual collection space for the team to preserve their outcome. So as a tool, people can directly upload their outcome of each session through the scanning app to the digital platform.
Physical experience
1. Start Kit - Get to know your colleague
Below shows what is included in this toolkit. There are one instruction booklet, one calendar, and various cards. Users can read the instruction to understand how to use our application to link the physical experience with digital experience. Then, they just need to tear the calendar to unlock the activity.
Instruction booklet design
User Journey Video
Below is the user journey video. It shows how users use the physical cards to play the activity at their Home.
2. Co-Creation Kit - Making and sharing with your colleague
Other than the starter’s Kit, we also have a co-creation kit. Unlike the starter’s Kit, the co-creation Kit is a sustainable monthly kit.
In each kit, it contains 4 different materials provided for 4 different team-building activities for the month. And after finishing 1 kit, the other one will be sent for the next month. The way it works is the same as the starter’s Kit but rather than focusing get to know each other, the main goal of the kit is to offer opportunities for colleagues to make stuff together, share stuff together in a delightful environment.
Below is a list of some of the activities we proposed, there will be a combination of Making and Sharing in each box. After each activity, people are encouraged to upload their outcomes into the virtual collection room to preserve their masterpiece.
We also took a video to demo the user journey of using this toolkit. Below is a video to show the entire process.
In this video, we were all playing the blind drawing activity together. Honestly, we all had some fun during this activity. This is a good team-building activity that we enjoy and willing to do. We all discussed and shared our thoughts through video-conferencing. Below are some recaps of our making of.
Happy Making of Photos
Future Scenario and Opportunities
As the world has been changing rapidly, in our design process, we also consider opportunities for different possible and future scenarios. We are considering the alternative when part of the team returned to the office or people have a big-time zone difference. We believe that alternatives could be made under our big idea to cater to different situations. Also, we see the opportunity to extend our design to other industries such as business through make some changes in our activities to fit their characteristics.
Project feedback & Reflection 🙌
Overall we were all satisfied with our final outcomes. I really like working with my teammates. Although we all live in different countries right now because of the coronavirus, there are so many unexpected challenges, we can still work together and make everything on track. It also inspired us to the "team-building and share moments" idea. This time, I was also responsible for team and time management. I reminded my teammates to follow our schedule every week. It really helps our productivity and can ensure everyone is working. Thank you my teammates to give feedback on my idea and we all work very hard on this project. As we all know, feedback loop is essential in every project. Although we may make a lot of mistakes at the beginning, we still learned a lot and improve our outcomes. Last but not least, it is a pleasure to work with the IBM iX team to find out possible design solutions for remote working. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us and give us a lot of valuable feedback. Also, it is really useful to have reviews and tutorials with our professors and classmates. I'm sure we all learned a lot from their suggestions.
Please have a look at the project portfolio for more detail.
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.
Garrison, D.R., 2006. Online collaboration principles. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 10(1), pp.25-34.
Ingold, T., 2013. Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge.
Rudani, R., 2013. Principles Of Management. New Delhi: McGraw Hill Education (India), p.761.
Shen, K. and Khalifa, M. (2009). Design for social presence in online communities: a multidimensional approach. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 1(2), 33-54.