Cultivate Teamwork from Anywhere

Context

The remote workplace revolution is bringing benefits but challenges as well: a more transaction work culture. It is in the companies’ best interest to improve employees’ satisfaction.

Brief

How might remote-first companies engage their employees in reflecting on and improving team dynamics?

Systemic Solution

Buzzfield promotes team building in remote-first companies with the metaphorical game representation of tending to a vibrant garden. Here, every contribution is a seed watered and nurtured through mutual aknowledgement and support. Challenges like hovering crows of miscommunication and stomping bears of burnout are detected and addressed early. When teams thrive, they harvest jars of sweet honey and their impact extends beyond their workspace, translated into donations.

Simplified Storyboard

Each member can plant new seeds in their team patch when they want to aknowledge some good dynamics, or water planted ones to show appreciation.

Issues can be voiced as well by introducing crows in the patch. The team lead can respond with scarecrows.

The moment of meaning of the service is the Harvesting session: a team meeting dedicated to reflecting on the team dynamics based on the data gathered by the platform.

To encourage participation and efforts, positive team dynamics are rewarded with proportionate sum of money to donate to the preferred organisation.

Each member can plant new seeds in their team patch when they want to aknowledge some good dynamics, or water planted ones to show appreciation.

The Design Process - User Research

from pain point and opportunities

After initial desk research to understand both the topic of team-building and remote working, we contacted 12 potential users and conducted one-on-one interviews remotely. From the informations gathered with the interview we drew a for each interviewee’s experience working remote. From this we identified pain points and then focus on needs and opportunities wie addressed in the problem framing and ideation phase.

to validation through co-design

After having developed a clear we applied participatory design methods through a co-design workshop we hold remotely. This allowed us to focus our effort in developing the most relevant solutions and discarding the ones that turned out not so useful or too impractical.

Mindsets - user profiling

The problem statement adress a potentially very wide customer segment, and the non-defined context of application spans worldwide and across many cultures. Therefore, we decided to opt for mindsets instead of personas as a user profiling tool.

Mindsets prioritize user’s experiences and attitudes rather than demographics. A person is likely to change and move from a mindset to another.

For each mindset we identified possible evolutions and most importantly what needs they have and how BuzzField answers to them.

Service Blueprint

The development of a user flowchart and of an extensive service blueprint, divided into 4 parts and 6 total sub-parts, were key to gain clarity and discuss the details of the service designed. It was essential to deal with the complexity and to communicate both internally and externally.

The following map, shown as an example, represents the first part of the moment of meaning of the service.

WHAT I DID - strenghts

I guided the inital research by leveraging interdisciplinary knowledge, specifically from the management education I am currently pursuing (MSc). I conducted some of the interviews and led part of the co-design workshop; I had a key role in synthesizing the insights from the different sources. Finally I worked on the offering map and the service blueprint. I often was the spokeperson of the group.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED - progress

With this project I was introduce to participatory design theory and methodology, I’ve learned specifically the importance of boundary objects and how to design them effectively. I’ve had the chance to work on the storytelling of both the process and the concept, specifically in the form of presentations, as we often had to formally deliver.

WHAT I WOULD IMPROVE - reflections

Impact measurement is missing as a very important step of the project. The breath of the problem statement might cause the solution to not be relevant, It would be useful to restrict the problem space, particularly focusing on a specific context, ideally on a specific company or role. The visual narrative needs to be improved. Futhermore I think interviews weren’t as effective as observation/shadowing could have been. Lastly I would have carried out the co-design workshop at an earlier stage as well, to avoid some biases in favor of our concept.

For more details on the service concept download the full presentation, to see a further reflection on the co-design process access the slides