Project Description
During this project, the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment presented the problem of shaming within the workplace. Our job was to create concepts that create awareness and/or prevent such a thing from happening. It could be related to shaming within the workplace or online shaming as a general topic in itself.
This project was done within the short span of a week and was completed in duos. Each day of the week was designated towards a specific task within the Design Sprint as seen below. I partnered up with Nidhi Sharma for this Design Sprint.
Monday - Brainstorming
On the first day of the Design Sprint, my partner and I conducted desk research around online shaming within the office. We researched types of online shaming, the causes, and its effects.
We then conducted a brainstorming session using Miro.
This mindmap was a result of the research and the insights we gained from it.
Furthermore, we brainstormed possible ways to raise awareness for online shaming within the office and added this to the mindmap as well.
Tuesday - Concepting
On Tuesday, my partner and I chose 3 concepts which we thought had potential to raise awareness for online shaming within the workplace and presented it to our mentors and peers. After receiving feedback, we redesigned our 3 concepts. I have attached the file with the in-depth descriptions of our concepts and iteration.
In the end, we finalized our final concept: The Virtual Checklist
The vision behind The Virtual Checklist is to inspire connection and bonding between employees to create a friendly and positive atmosphere. For our concept, we came up with the slogan "Connect and Respect."
The Virtual Checklist is a mandatory checklist that employees within the workplace will be given through their company portals. This checklist will include special activities that stimulate bonding between coworkers and is updated weekly with new activities.
By doing so, we hope to diminish the presence of shaming within the office and also get rid of the side effects that may be affecting the mental health and productivity of employees.
Wednesday - Sketching
On Wednesday, sketches were created for both mobile and desktop versions of our concept: The Virtual Checklist.
Desktop Version
Mobile Version
Thursday - Storyboard + Prototyping
On Thursday, a storyboard was created in order to visualize how The Virtual Checklist works. It shows how users are able to interact with the solution and what the outcome of this interaction is.
To the right is the image of the storyboard created.
Furthermore, we visualized our sketches into mobile and desktop prototypes using Adobe XD.
The prototypes are linked here.
Friday - Testing
On Friday, our prototypes were tested. The research method used was observation as we were conducting field research. We sent the Adobe XD link to some peers and observed the way they navigated through the prototypes. After this was done, we asked our participants a few questions in order to gain further insight into their opinions and recommendations on our concept and prototypes.
The participants mentioned that they found the concept to be very good for creating stronger relationships within the workplace and they also loved the example ideas which we listed within the prototypes. One piece of important feedback we received was that not all employees of all ages would like to participate in such activities. The participant mentioned that coming up with activities that are friendly for all ages would be a great idea that will allow everyone to be willing to participate.
Reflection
Overall, I found the Design Sprint project really fun because I felt like it challenged me to complete a lot within such a short period of time. At the end, when feedback was received, we are unable to implement it within our concept because of limited time. However, we received many compliments about our concept and people said that it was a fun way to tackle the problem at hand. I do think that if this project was longer, we would've been able to develop our concept further and make it stronger. This would've been done by iterating on our prototypes, testing these iterations, and adapting to user feedback. I also found that this design sprint was also nice to complete within duos because communication wasn't hard to maintain with one partner. Because my partner and I come from the same cultural background, it made it much easier to cooperate. We worked together effectively and completed our tasks within time without any hardships whatsoever. With regards to Human-Centered Design, my partner and I implemented the Ideation method. We generated ideas together by brainstorming to raise awareness of shaming within the office, identified a final concept to design, prototyped it, and finally tested it.