We thought what do newcomers need is to teach them everything at once, but what they actually need is to be seen by everyone.

Let everyone see you at work in 3 steps

• See/Show works
• Talk about it
• Rewarded a free coffee, on us
  

1ON1, a causal works sharing platform encourage 1-ON-1 conversation in office.

Description:

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A marketable solution pin-pointing the key problem identified from user researches: User is in lack of recognition from colleagues due to the colleagues share little understanding of user’s work experience built from his/her hometown.

This is a 2 months intensive User Experience Design Project with extensive research on both market & users, analysis on stakeholders' concerns and difficulties. Worked towards a high-fidelity prototype that effectively solves the pain points backed by user tests.
Identifying key problems that new Londoners truly encountered and designed and marketable/ pragmatic solutions, balancing the needs of stakeholders.

Date: Sep-Nov 2019
Role: UX Designer + Brand Designer
City:  London

UX techniques

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Market Research (Competitive map, Features analysis, Comparative analysis), User Research (Research Plan, User Interviews, Guerrilla testing), 
Define Problem Statement, Prepare Discussion Guide, Persona Set Up, Feature Prioritization, User Flow+ Happy path, Sketches ( Lo-fi annotated wireframe ), Site mapping, Card sorting ( Closed card sorting and analysis ) User Tests ( Lo-Fi & Lo-Fi Wireframes ), Prototype ( Hi-Fi InVision Clickable), Task analysis, Branding, UX writing, Project Proposal Writing, Presentations to stakeholders

UX Tools

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Sharpies, white boarding, Colourful post-its, Invisions & Sketch, Adobe illustrator (illustrations), alongside loads of “Why”, a pair of good ears, and Empathy.

User Research: Interviews

• User see everyday problems as new experience
  It shows although newcomers did experience lots of everyday problems when they start a new life. They don’t see it as a big problem. In contrast, they see those challenges as a new experience indeed
  
       
  

• Problem pop up after a period a time rather than upon arrival
  Unexpectedly, the most significant problem they have encountered does not happen upon their arrival but after a certain period at work. The fact is, newcomers moved from a different city, their previous working experience was built from their home countries where little in the office is familiar with. Newcomers face a problem about couldn’t receive recognition from everyone in the workplace. They might be acknowledged by someone who hired them, but not from the same level co-workers nor junior.
  
  
  

• Little recognition on their hometown experience
  In Jodi’s case, who supposed on the senior level in Hong Kong, she’s been regarded as a mid-weight level in the company. She felt being undervalued whenever co-operating with teammates, and constantly doubted the incapacity of her line-manager.
  
  

What? How might we help working group, who are new to London to gain recognition from the office?

( Click to see the development )

Ivy needs a way to help her manage to take the senior role. It’s because she wants everyone in the office could recognize she is a qualified person to entitle more.

    (Click to see the development)

    In the feature prioritization (solution ideation), I found that constant communication such as 1-ON-1 seems to be the best way to build up
    mutual recognition and bringing a positive working relationship.

• Wider scale of stakeholders involved
  After scoping down to “create something for office”, many more stakeholders have been involved added up many considerations. The challenge at this point was to come up with a pragmatic solution that is able to balance needs between users, colleagues in the office and the company. Especially it’s tough to rationalize “Why the company needs to pay for the staff to build recognition among the team”.

SMALL TALK

Group discussion brings views, 1 to 1 conversation builds work effectiveness!
A platform encourages 1 to 1 SMALL TALK, at work.

Mutual recognition smoothen work partnerships = Effective working environment 

To meet the core user goal, “wants to be recognized by everyone that she is a qualified person to entitle more” ( a.k.a Efficient working environment in company’s perspective), by creating a talent/portfolio sharing platform that facilitates and encourage 1 to 1 communication focus at another’s achievement. 1 to 1 casual conversation creates synergy accelerating relationships among staffs, private talk creates room for honestly, understanding and trust. Group discussion helps little on 1 to 1 bonding. What to talk about? The folio/updates embody as the topics

Balancing needs of stakeholders

• “Why the company need to pay for the staff to build recognition among the team” ?  (Entrprenuer’s need)
  
  Same effectiveness, lower cost to the company
  Extra social activities / 1-ON-1 session means higher cost and lower margin of deliverables of the company
  
  

User Flow + Happy Path

The card sorting result is quite positive, testers were able to sort cards in the designed category. Overall, the wording might make some confusions but that could be addressed by visual icons instead.

Referencing to portfolio sharing portal “Behance” has helped me form the skeleton of the wireframe.
I believe it would be also good to borrow design everyone uses nowadays, such as Instagram, to skip the pickup time of the user to adapt a different UI design.

I use the above lo-fi wireframes to conduct my first user testing.
Key-takeaways:

1. Cannot see “1 ON 1” as the objective of the application,
2. Think the comment could make publicly because the interface looked similar to Instagram 
3. Want to go straight to the Small Talk portal rather than through slack
4. Edit Post button  “why can’t I press the post itself to edit but do one more step?”  

Overall, users can complete task 01 and 02 but not task 03. Because they couldn’t see the “Free coffee” message, which was the hint to them and direct them to the reward page.

• Add hints about the free coffee since the first message, more like teasing messages, letting user know as long as they keep chatting, the free coffee is on the way.

• Users would also look for reward via notification page and search so I added the functions correspondingly.  

• Users seldom use “my profile”, which is quite different to my expectation, so I make the avatar looked more like a button by adding a white border.

• Prototype design:
  - although it is a prototype, still need to create more hints to facilitate the test
  - minimize the” in between steps”as testers would be easily get lost when no motion/ transitions serve as the transitions on prototype
  - add hotspot on prototype if they are supposed to have motion/animation

• Affordance: To address the unclear problem, I made the message like a button to enhance offer more hint for users to the reward page
  

• A quick guidance has been added on boarding session and summarized into 3 steps to make sure users know where and what’s going on

Product name:

Tone and manner:  

Communication ideas:

UX writing:

Colour: 
Bright Yellow (R255 G55 B0) is the primary colour. The bright energetic yellow has rarely been used at work tools, it brings freshness to the workplace. The objective of this colour selection is to make the app easy to be registered, help to build up the visual uniqueness of the brand identity.

Bright Green (former primary colour) was selected but now changed to yellow, because it provides weaker contrast with the visual elements thus weaker readability than yellow. And the brightness might be too strong for the ease of watching

Logo Idea:  
Human relationship takes the greatest role in our product. Private 1-On-1 conversation between colleagues is the key function we would like to emphasize. To bring this idea upfront, the “1” in the name has been visualized as a human shape featured in minimal style.
It also visually resonates with the “ON” mode of a switch button, which implies the 1ON1 relationship has been turned on.

Splash screen animation communication:

The splash screen tells the be-seen-story by revealing the yellow man among the mayhem “WHO” sea, to further reinforce the marketing message “Let everyone see you”.
The yellow man connects all human implications throughout the splash screen, from transiting into the alphabet “O” in the tagline to the reveal of 1-ON-1 Logo, to detail the product idea in visual storytelling.

Onboarding

Project next steps:

1. Develop desktop version
   Provided websites and apps must adapt to smaller and larger screen, it is easier to stretch out designs and content than to compress. Hence, I started the project with mobile design. Developing desktop version should be the next step, given 1ON1 is a tool for white-collars, where desktop users are commonly found.


2. Solving the rest of the user’s problem
   1ON1 is designed for the primary problem new Londoners facing, it doesn’t mean it is the only problem they faced.
   After a certain period, our product could expand or open a sub-seed to pin-point the secondary problems new Londoners is facing, which is the 360 self- help guide, to provide comprehensive solutions to users.