FordLabs
FordLabs is an innovation team within Ford Motor Company affiliated businesses that champions new solutions to existing problems. Our group was tasked with finding a way to boost organic social interactions among hybrid and remote FordLabs employees.
Client
FordLabs
Year
2023
Tools
Figma, Miro
How can we create a solution for FordLabs that provides their employees with organic social interactions that foster open, natural, & engaging collaboration?
Problem Statement
Our user group is primarily focused on all hybrid and remote employees at FordLabs, with a secondary focus on in person staff
User Group
Our goal for this project was to design a lo-fidelity solution to facilitating organic social interactions that foster open, natural, and engaging collaboration at FordLabs
Project Deliverable
Final Designs
Office Newsletter - Primary Solution
Lifestyle Posts:
Labsians can share their life outside of work with their co-workers.
Social Work Events:
Employees can set up fun activities to engage with their co-workers virtually or in-person.
Interaction Prompts:
Employees are selected each day to write hot takes or interesting questions for their fellow Labsians.
Biggest Features
Raid and Event Notification - Recommendation 1
Notification System
Labsians are notified when events are about to begin, making events more accessible.
Filters
Employees are able to decide when they are notified and if they should be notified when working on certain apps.
Biggest Features
Pinterest-Inspired Event Planner - Recommendation 2
Pinterest Event Inspiration:
Users have the opportunity to create events with a running feed of ideas for event type and past events.
Collaborative Event Creation:
Labsians can invite and collaborate on an event with multiple co-workers, and can share their events to specific channels.
Biggest Features
The Process
For our initial research into this problem space we chose to complete secondary research, comparative analysis, and interviews with FordLabs employees.
Research
Our team created an affinity diagram to help us organize our responses for the six research questions that we wanted to answer:
How are current companies connecting their remote workers?
How are new employees connecting with their coworkers?
How can virtual interactions become more natural?
How are existing virtual communities successful?
How can we minimize the downsides of virtual collaboration?
What infrastructure do other companies have for remote work connections?
Secondary Research
Different ways to maintain social interactions
Maintaining a casual, fun work environment where there are daily opportunities for online connection is key to generating social interactions amongst remote workers.
Creating opportunities for working side-by-side with other employees, the discussion of non-work related topics, and working in groups also promotes more organic interactions among workers.
Socializing and events outside of work
Regularly hosting fun social events outside of the virtual work environment helps to foster more spur-of-the moment social interactions.
Some examples of enjoyable social events include virtual coffee breaks, company contests, and weekly conversation topics
Structure of social interactions
Having a clear definition of roles within teams and clearly communicating social events with all event details included is essential.
Self care and mental health
Staying in touch with others outside of work and self-care are important.
Reaching out to other coworkers and asking how they are doing can increase trust and relationships between them.
Outcomes of remote work socializing
Helping others without expecting anything in return helps people feel better about themselves and the people that they are interacting with.
Socializing and building relationships outside of work helps employees feel a stronger sense of purpose in their community and promotes team bonding.
Our main findings from our secondary research included:
For our comparative analysis, we wanted to look at what tools were currently being used to promote virtual interaction and the value they provided. The 3 main tools we focused on were:
Comparative Analysis
A “real-life” virtual office space that allows your avatar to communicate with others and interact.
Gather.town
Toucan Events
A virtual networking tool that allows for easier and more efficient communication between employees.
Donut
A slack integration tool that promotes team building and engagement through collaboration.
Spontaneous Interactions
Natural, spontaneous interactions were best facilitated by features encouraging fun and collaborative teamwork.
Potential Solution-Facilitation Method
Focus on competitor analysis centered on platforms like Gather, transforming virtual workspaces into interactive, enjoyable video game-like environments for chatting and office space decoration.
Incorporating External Ideas
Integration of collaborative elements from competitors like Toucan's group conversation design and Buffer's structured meeting plans into forthcoming solutions and concepts.
Our main findings from our secondary research included:
Our sponsors provided a list of FordLabs employees that were willing to volunteer for our interviews. Each team member chose a volunteer and attempted to schedule an interview. Our team came back with five interviews with Labsians and affinity diagrammed the results.
We completed interviews with FordLabs employees to help us understand the current methods of their communication between each other.
Interviews
Our main insights from our interviews were:
Schedule Flexibility
From our interviews and affinity diagram, we learned that a virtual work environment allows for a great amount of flexibility in the employee’s schedule.
Awareness of Coworkers Status
Employees also prefer to know when their coworkers are busy and when they are available to chat during breaks or lunch, which is shown in their most commonly used communication tool, Slack.
Casual, Laid Back Working Environment
Most FordLabs employees also enjoy FordLab’s casual, laid back working environment that prioritizes collaborative group work.
Need for Increased Social Events
Workers expressed a need for more in-person social events as most virtual work, while convenient, has caused some Labsians to feel disconnected from FordLab’s company culture and inner work community.
Design Workshop
The goal for this workshop is to understand how individuals interact in a virtual work environment, and based on their experience, generate ideas and sketches that improve social interactions between coworkers existing in the same virtual environment.
Our approach for this workshop was to involve our participants in three activities, each of which focused on a different method to analyze and ideate off of the experience of working in a virtual environment.
Activity 1: Gather.town Workday Simulation
Participants simulated a workday on Gather, a virtual HQ platform. Each individual was given a hypothetical role at FordLabs: Product Manager, Product Designer, and Software Engineer.
Activity 2: S.C.A.M.P.E.R Mapping
Participants identified different opportunities to improve the virtual workday experience with S.C.A.M.P.E.R. mapping. I provided seven prompts for ideation: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify (Also Magnify and Minify), Put to another use, Eliminate, and Rearrange.
Participants advocated for third party integration via Zoom, Discord, Slack, etc. and increased text conversations.
Activity 3: Round Robin Sketching
Six timed rounds of Round Robin sketching were completed. Sketching prompts were passed in a circle until everyone contributed.
Participants sketched for:
1) How might we incorporate team-building activities that naturally bring employees together?
2) How can we leverage the power of storytelling and shared experiences to strengthen relationships?
The main insights we took away from our co-design workshop were:
Sharing Personal News
Participants desired increased avenues to initiate conversation, such as sharing personal news, accomplishments, and life updates with their coworkers.
More Direct Communication
Additional paths for direct communication, such as text messaging, dedicated chat rooms, and enhanced video call functionality were desired by co-design participants.
Integration of an Office Newsletter
An office newsletter idea was envisioned by participants to initiate conversation naturally among coworkers, directly influencing my later solutions.
Sketching & Ideation
After our workshop, our team focused on creating our sketches and ideas. We wanted to focus on the main ideas our participants and interviewees had in our prior research.
Office Newsletter (Primary Solution)
Workshop participants directly suggested a newsletter opportunity to promote more interactions.
Newsletter includes multiple routes for engaging with coworkers
Raid Event Notification (Recommendation 1)
Interviewees wanted more virtual event interactions
Can view RSVP and attendee information
Pinterest Event Planner (Recommendation 2)
Pinterest board generates new and past events
Events are led by one person
We used these sketches to conduct concept testing with a group of our peers working on a different project as well as the FordLabs employees we talked to during our interviews. Our main takeaways from our concept testings were:
Office Newsletter
Most favored design
Including prompts for each newsletter could increase motivation to participate.
Raid Notification
Best for remote events
Could be distracting, so include a “Do Not Disturb” option
Pinterest Planning Tool
Best used for formal event planning that can have multiple collaboraters
We used the feedback from our concept testing to further iterate on our ideas and build our low-fidelity final solutions at the top of this page.
Reflection
I really enjoyed how exploratory this project was and how much the team got to choose which direction it went in. I think the problem scope was more unique than any project I have worked on because it did not have one clear solution. This project allowed us to do a lot of research, both secondary and primary, which was really beneficial and good practice to further develop our skills in this area. We had to look at aspects of social psychology, industrial organizational psychology, and the current work culture at FordLabs to see how each of these areas could influence our final solution. This project also consisted of a lot of sketching and collaborative ideation. I learned about the value of getting to co-design with other students and virtual workers and how much we can learn from those activities. Our team members all had different ideas and ways to facilitate organic social interactions and we were able to combine these into our final design.