Summary
Meetbright is a class project from an HCI course. The purpose is to simulate a real-world project from formulating a design problem to creating a prototype solution.
My team proposed intervention for young professionals with social anxiety concerns in workplace.
Time frame: Sept - Dec, 2018
Role: UX researcher and designer
Skills: Paper prototype; Figma; Principle
Result: High-fidelity prototype
Problem
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is an intense anxiety or fear of being observed, negatively evaluated, or judged in social situations. It affects 15 million adults in the U.S, with 28 percent identifying the workplace as a source of anxiety. Office politics, lofty expectations, conflicts among colleagues, all contribute to the prevalence of SAD in workplace.
Challenge
How can we take the context of workplace into consideration to tackle the problem of social anxiety?
01 Research
The main target users are young, college-graduate age professionals who have recently made the transition from school to work. Research suggests that this group may be especially vulnerable to the pressure of adjusting to working with others, and are more likely to experience SAD.
We interviewed three young professionals and a company manager to gain a comprehensive understanding.
The interview suggests both conflicts and similar needs in stakeholder groups. This discrepancy inspired us to focus on the common interests and build a solution that’s applicable to both the company and employee.
I created two personas to analyze how each user type may find our tool and what would keep them using it. Thus, a critical user need was discovered: a sense of accomplishment that comes from personal growth.
02 Ideation
Off with research findings, I led a 1-hour brainstorming session to ideate design possibilities. Together, we came up with 30+ ideas.
We then sketched three initial designs with the following goals:
Motivate users to engage with co-workers;
Practice social skills;
Personalize the solutions;
Track progress made.
Option #1: Social Scenario Training
By simulating social scenarios, this app allows users to practice social skills before face-to-face interaction.
Option #2: Idea Generation
This mobile app helps discover new conversation ideas, possible activities, and hangout places for after-hours. It also incorporates an achievement system.
Option #3: Positive Thinking
A keyword and an illustrative image on the front is combined with concept explanation, suggested activities, and encouraging reflections on the back.
After careful consideration, we believed that option #1 may add too much burden to users and push them too hard. Option #3, though tempting for its simplicity of use, may not be versatile enough to meet our goals by itself. We chose option #2, the idea generation app, to further iterate. This would maximize the use of employee directory, encourage input from users, and link these two critical groups.
03 Low-fi design
We created a paper prototype as it allows quick testing and easy modification.
04 Testing
We first conducted two heuristic evaluation and four usability testing.
Users liked how this design could function as a bridge between company life and social life. They also enjoyed the self-rating mechanism, saying that they’d give themselves high ratings as extra motivation.
Some negative feedbacks were used to improve the design. Below summarizes the changes.
Navigate one’s profile
In previous versions, it took users a lot of clicking to finish a task.
We got rid of the icon-based buttons and combined them into a panel with swiping page control.
From idea generation to conversation
Our participants noted that generating ideas has a strange AI feeling. Besides, the informative bio is sufficient enough to come up with small talk ideas.
Therefore, we replaced idea generation with a messaging system. Combining with the swiping feature, users could utilize the profile info and have a great conversation.
Take notes about people inside the profile
We added a third swiping page to add notes, saving users the trouble of tapping the “Notes” tab and navigating back to chat.
05 Hi-fi design
I developed a color palette and led the digital mockup design. We also conducted another heuristic evaluation with the digital mockup. Below is the final task walkthrough.
06 Reflection
As the only designer in my team, I experienced the demanding life of a design professional. The course combined both theoretical knowledge and design practice, requiring us to provide regular report updates and approach users at the same time.
The biggest lesson I learned is how to combat our biases. We thought of solving this problem at the company level, building an algorithm-based app, using a non-digital prompt… and eventually, we had to let go of all these ideas. Our TAs and users had been more than helpful in guiding us to identify problems and broaden perspectives. While it’s not easy to combat the natural and learned bias, the conscious practice of overriding it brings a new level of fulfillment to my design thinking.