User Research

Define our audiences

VMware Borathon asked teams to hack on an idea that could be useful to the VMware business. After 48 hours of brainstorming we landed on the idea of creating a productivity & mindfulness app. This idea was based on an assumption that the biggest problem facing VMware employees today is adapting to a work from home lifestyle.

Validate our assumptions

To validate our assumption, we sent surveys out to 30 of our VMware colleagues. From these surveys, we discovered that our colleagues are experiencing burnout, Zoom fatigue, meetings that de-energize them, and too much of sitting at their desk all day with little-to-no human interaction.

Why is this important?

After conducting research, we found that problems employees are facing can lead to a decrease in retention. And this is not just common to VMware, as we have seen that COVID and work from home have affected almost every company and has led to the great resignation.

As a company, VMware’s goal should be to motivate, inspire, and be aware of employees' mental, physical, and emotional needs so that we all can perform our best work and feel accomplished and fulfilled in the professional aspect of our lives.

Competitive Audit

In order to construct a concise and solid foundation for Balance, we had to venture out and see what the prominent productivity applications were already doing and what user goals they were not achieving. We evaluated several features deemed vital from user surveys and identified those that Balance could capitalize on to have a leg up over other applications.

Recess

MinimaList

GenMind

Dig Deeper - 1:1 User Interviews

We wanted to hear a little bit more from users so we talked to 6 participants.

Engineering Manager

Manager

Engineer

Engineer

Engineering Manager

Director of Partnerships

After interviewing, it became evident that the goals they wanted to accomplish fell within the same categories:

• 80% of participants mentioned they make small to-do lists of what they want to accomplish for the day (notes app, reminders app, written)
• 60% of participants mentioned their managers want to know how their employees are feeling about projects - such as if they are stressed, overworked, or unhappy
• 100% of participants mentioned since WFH, they stay seated at their desk for hours due to back to back meetings
• 50% of participants mentioned they like hearing from and being inspired by their managers and leaders in the company, especially when the leaders are down to earth and relatable

Open up the problem

This led us to our problem statement!

How may we track/enhance individuals productivity and mental health by introducing experience sampling and memetic desires?

Experience/Mood Sampling:

We chose experience sampling so that we could get the most data from users, and see how their emotions are tied to their experiences. Moreover, we wanted to sample at random intervals so the data was more accurate.

Memetic Desires:

Means an element of a culture that is passed from one individual to another by imitation. So we wanted to explore how we could inspire each other and introduce positive imitation.

Idea Matrix

Jobs to be Done

Based on our idea matrix, we identified 1 primary activity and 3 secondary activities our users could be performing.

Process Flow

We created this workflow diagram to understand how users enter the app and what function leads to the next. This also displays the primary and secondary patterns identified in our jobs to be done exercise.

User Journeys

Ideation Sketches

Our Solution

Build Scenario Flows with Hi-Fi Wireframes

Problems I Solved

Land On a Creative Direction

A team member and I worked on identifying the style guide: color pallet, typography and illustrations. We had the option of sticking with VMware's design system but we opted against it as we wanted the app to feel less corporate and more approachable.

We considered color pallets that health and wellness websites use like VMware's therapy vendor and our own health care provider. From this we landed on our foundational colors: yellow which is associated with happiness and blue which is associated with calmness. From there we built upon our color pallet based on components that were included in the wireframes such as errors, success and progress, labels and charts.

Accessibility Consideration

Conclusion

Through this project, we accomplished the following goals:

✔️ Built experience/mood sampling and memetic desire features. Offered users two types of charts to track/enhance productivity, chat box to interact with their manager live, an interactive social page to get inspired by peers and an achievements page to track accomplished challenges.

✔️ Created a progressive, fresh design that encourages continued engagement with Balance for productivity & wellness. The app allows users to enable notifications to remind them about upcoming tasks, recommendations, mood check-ins, share data with their manager and integrate with other applications all with the click of a button.

✔️ Designed for users with limited vision using larger font and high-contrast colors that follow WCAG guidelines.

What I Learned

💡Giving and receiving feedback through the method of “Glow and Grow”

💡The importance of team communication and organization during a short scope project

💡Design frameworks change based on the project and scope

For next time

📌 More team check-ins on what’s done and what’s in queue

📌 Identify the user stories you want to showcase before building out the Hi-Fi wireframes

📌 Run more usability tests throughout the process

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