Clo se li

Duration

Jan 2021 - May 2021

Project Context

User experience class

Tools Used

Figma

Photoshop

Roles

User experience design: Wireframes, Hi-fi prototype

Research: 1-1 User interviews, Affinity mapping, Competitive analysis, Feature inventory

Overview

Problem

Due to the pandemic, working from home (WFH) has become a norm for most of the office workers and students. The remote working style significantly impacted our lifestyles, social relationships and productivity in many different ways. Some people consider it a positive change given that it offers benefits like less commuting, more time with family and flexible scheduling, while the others feel overwhelmed by extended working hours, reduced social interaction, worsened health and lower productivity. For this project, I want to understand office workers' and students' overall WFH experience and see how I can improve it.

Solution

My solution to this problem is an app called Closeli that encourages neighbors and friends within the same community to socialize together with safety measures. The app provides opportunities for people who long for in-person social activities to effortlessly connect with others and take breaks from work.

How can we improve people's work from home experience?

Generative Research

WFH Experience

Background

This research study is to understand people's WFH experience and how we can improve it.

Goals

Understand people's work from home schedule, experience, work life balance and health status compared to working in the office / on campus, and discover potential issues caused by working from home.

Sample Interview Questions

Please describe a normal workday and weekend working from home. (Ask the following questions according to interviewees' response to the first question.)
How does working from home change your social life positively and negatively?
How does working from home impact your health positively and negatively?
How does working from home change your work positively and negatively?
What would be an ideal schedule for you?
What goals do you have?
What do you do to achieve your goals?

Methodology

This will be an 1:1 interview consisting of 8 participants. The participants should be selected from a diverse background in order to get a comprehensive understanding. Each participant session will last 30 minutes. Interviews will occur over Zoom. The interviews will be recorded if the participants consent.

Participant Screening

Age range: 15 - 65.
Currently or formerly working/studying from home.
Current or former student or worker.

Interview Outcome

I interviewed 8 interviewees in total. 3 of them were full-time students, 3 of them were full-time students with part-time jobs, 1 of them were full-time students with full-time jobs, and 1 of them were working full-time

Interview Reflection

I conducted 1-1 interviews with 8 people in 3 weeks. At the beginning, I interviewed with close friends and took notes using my computer. I realized that the information I gained from close friends had a lot of bias. For example, some of my close friends focused on impacts that are solely negative or positive and easily made the assumption that I already knew most of the context when they answered my questions. So I intentionally interviewed people I wasn't close with later. Additionally, in later interviews, I wrote down some key points in my notebook instead of typing the entire conversation later because I realized that taking notes on my computer made the conversation choppy and unnatural.

* Interview notes were processed to protect privacy of participants. There are around 30 pages of interview notes. I only display a selection of them here.

Sample Interview Notes

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Affinity Maps Analysis

From the affinity maps, we can summarize 4 key points: need a better schedule; need reasons to do things; miss outdoor and exercise; miss in-person social interaction. Seeing these needs, I wondered how a design solution could address them. So I changed my How Might We statemnt to..

How can we improve people's in-person social experiences when working from home?

Brainstorm

Understanding that many of my interviewees have schedules that are tiring and unhealthy, I thought taking short breaks would be helpful for their health and productivity. In order to give them a reason to take breaks, I thought in-person social interaction would be encouraging and fun. While socializing with others, why not step outside and do some exercise?

Generative Research

Social Experience

In order to understand how to improve in-person social experiences, I followed up with some interviewees and asked about their social preference. Here is a summary of the findings from these conversations:

Prefer to stay in the neighborhood for activities during short breaks.

Most of the interviewees only have a limited amount of time to take breaks in between work, so they usually stay close to home.
Social preferences change.

Some interviewees mentioned that their social preferences change. Sometimes they prefer to be alone, but other times they prefer to have company. Interviewees also mentinoed that they don't have close relationships with their neighbors, but that they would like to get to know them better when they are in a mood to meet new people. Sometimes they just want to socialize with friends.
Safety Concern.

Interviewees mentioned that some of their neighbors don't wear masks. Safety concern like this can discourage them from building relationships with new people.
Difficulty socializing with others.

Interviewees mentioned some difficulty socializing with others, including finding people with similar interests, finding common topics and organically scheduling meetups.

Competitive Analysis

In order to offer a smooth user experience, I analyzed social networking apps like Bumble, Hinge and Nextdoor and share ride apps like Uber and Lyft. Using this analysis, I adopted some of the features and designs offered by these platforms. Here is a brief summary of the features I adopted:

House rules.

Set up rules users must follow to participate in the community.
Customized profiles.

Give users flexibility to set up profiles and use this information to find friends with similar interests.
Safety features.

Offer tools such as emergency contacts and a reporting system to ensure users' safety.
Geolocation features

Provide location and time estimate service to boost the meetup experience.

Initial Design

Design Ideation

After understanding users' needs and necessary features to include, I came up with my first iteration of the design. For this iteration, I tried to make the user flow as linear and straightforward as possible to offer clear guidance for potential users, especially users who aren't tech-savvy. Under this approach, I also offered flexibility for users to hide private information, opt out of data syncing and skip questions because I believe that users should have the choices to protect their data privacy and remain silent for information that they don't feel comfortable with sharing.

1st Time User Flow

Wireframes

Setup profile

Preference settings

Generate schedule

Review schedule

Take breaks & socialize

Testing

I tested the wireframe with a classmate and my instructor Here is a brief summary of their feedback:

Feels safe and welcomed because of the house rules and well-considered instructions.
Clean and beautiful user interface.
The reminder to follow CDC guidelines is helpful.
Ask for location permission after showing users more what the app is about because users may feel more comrfotable to share their location in this way.
Profile set-up is too long.
A messaging system where users can communicate with others before meeting up would be helpful.
It may not be comfortable to share exact location