ShiftWrist

Time Frame

11 weeks

Software used

Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, Canva, Miro

Group Members

Isak Powell
Dorothy Dube
Josh Lee

*The ideation stage onwards was completed in pairs, working solely with Isak Powell.

Design Brief

Shift Wrist was designed in my second year of the Bachelor of Design Computing, as part of the User Experience Design Studio (DECO2014).

The design brief was to redesign the workplace to be a more equitable working environment, achieved through a digitally focused user experience. The final deliverable must show both an overview of the entire user journey, and one touchpoint in detail.

My role

Prior to the design phase, I designed context mapping studies, moderated empathy-based generative sessions and extrapolated insights from the data. I additionally created the user journey map, engaged in prototyping and presented the final design ideas.

Introduction

Employee engagement is a critical strategic business objective as it fosters a positive company culture in which there is long-term employee retention, higher levels of productivity, and improved quality of work. In shift work particularly, a lack of appreciation by management contributes to lower productivity and an overall negative impact on one’s sense of belonging within the workplace.

Our design brief recognises that work engagement is critical for both employees and employers. Therefore, we aim to improve the satisfaction and overall well-being of employees in shift work by implementing strategies involving recognition and reward.

Research

An online ethnography was conducted through scholarly resources in order to best construct assets and activities necessary for our research. Sensitising booklets were used to help participants become accustomed to the process of reflecting on their experiences and memories of their employment history prior to the generative sessions.

Our sensitising activities focus on participants’ weekday and weekend schedules. The booklet consists of 8 activities across 5 days, covering topics such as ‘morning routine’, ‘hobbies’, ‘relaxation’, and ‘productivity’.

Once completing the sensitising activities a week prior, participants were invited to participate in a generative session which consisted of a collage, a cognitive map, and a physical interactive task. These tasks were designed to further illustrate the relationship between employees and their workplace environment.

The collage encouraged participants to assign their own meanings to ambiguous words, images and icons using their career experience and needs as a basis of comparison. This helped us in answering our research questions about the rewarding and frustrating aspects of shift jobs, and the impact of COVID-19 on shift workers.

The cognitive map uses a spatial circle template that participants complete to map the interactions they experience during shifts at their current job, assisting us with our research question about the relationship between workplace interactions and employee wellbeing.

The final activity is a physical interactive task where participants stand along a spectrum of 5 lines ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ in response to a statement describing their future dream shift job

Analysis

To reframe and organise findings from the generative sessions, statement cards were made using Miro as an online collaborative tool. Quotes were selected by each group member from generative session transcripts and clustered based on topics. After group discussion, a variety of overarching themes were made for the research visualisation.

An infographic was created to visually display information collected from generative sessions and synthesised themes from statement cards.

see infographic

Ideation

Based on the 7 themes identified from our generative sessions, we found that most shift workers are extrinsically motivated; meaning they perceive work as motivation to earn money or receive praise from management.

An intrinsically motivated person, on the other hand, focuses on finding belonging, curiosity and meaning in their work.

Taking the root of this problem into consideration, we then ideated solutions that have the following design goals:

Encouragement of growth and learning

Giving employees opportunities to learn new skills helps motivate them to develop and work at their maximum potential

Praise Employees

Recognition schemes, communication and letting employees know their work is making a difference.

Creates a positive working environment

Building a workplace where employees look forward to coming to work, allowing employees to pursue their interests

Crazy 8s Technique

Storyboards were used to help contextualise our ideas in response to the problem. This brought my group member and I to a total of 4 ideas that had undergone extensive peer feedback. We utilised a decision matrix (Pugh) chart that allowed us to evaluate our ideas using a set of key criteria. These heuristics were based off academic literature and user needs derived from generative sessions

Through a Pugh chart analysis and feedback with industry professionals, we identified key features in the Wearable AI Wristband as it can be applied to the various complexities of shift work, whilst giving a visualisation of an employee's progress and achievements. Therefore, the AI Wristband was selected as the most successful concept that responded to the design brief.

Design

Prior to designing the interface of our concept, we first sought user feedback by conducting interviews with people who work casual/part time shift jobs. Our primary question was “would you use an AI wristband at your work?”

Through this process, we identified key areas of improvement/concerns with our design. For example, a key feature to take into consideration was privacy concerns as some employees may not feel comfortable wearing a wristband that tracks their data. Therefore, when designing the interface we ensured to allow for options such as asking to not share data.

Final Concept

The Shift Wrist is a design solution based on emerging technology. It has a projected, touch screen interface in which employees can receive personalised task lists, messenger/voice typing to communicate with their team, as well as further health tracking features.

Employees are encouraged to scan their wristband at a designated kiosk. Where they can view a breakdown of their health statistics and insights gained from their shift. It additionally offers features such as advice and training modules, a journal in which feedback can be sent back to the manager or simply used as a way to input notes from the day

The Shift Wrist is a concept that is an appropriate response to the design brief because it aims to boost intrinsic motivation by targeting innate psychological needs. It is also an applicable design that can be used in the various complexities of shift work. The Shift Wrist clearly highlights the visualisation of an employee’s progress and achievements whilst utilising a simple, easy-to-use interface compatible with the type of technology chosen.

A user journey map was made to outline a detailed timeline a user may take when using the Shift Wrist. It features current and future touch-points as well as thoughts and feelings the user may experience.

Shift Wrist