Designing to foster team culture in virtual workplaces

Virtual onboarding

This is the second part of a Mdes thesis project at University of Washington with a focus on design ideation.

Thesis introduction

To white collar knowledge workers, remote working has enabled new lifestyles that weren’t possible before. However, it also raised several concerns around it, based on my research last quarter, here are some problems addressed in remote team communication:

• Lack of employee visibility. Managers are not able to see or check in on the employees as often. Oftentimes they would assume the employees are not as focused as they would be in person. Employees are feeling less appreciated and being constantly micromanaged from time to time.
• Decreased chances to build workplace relationships. There are no casual chats that just happen in the hallway or by the water coolers anymore. Especially for new hires, it is hard to build relationships with the rest of the team when they have never met in person.
• Lack of movement and place change for remote employees. Most people I interviewed do all their work and work-related activities at their desk. Without the movement and place change, it’s extra easy for employees to have mental fatigue.
• Exchange of non-verbal signals. While the non-verbal signals remain complex in virtual communication, seeing each other only in cropped boxes makes it hard for users to send and receive more subtle signals.(Bailenson, 2021) Users are starting to evolve a set of new norms around these complex signals.

Based on my research finding, this part of my thesis is focused on how we might facilitate team communication and foster team culture in remote workgroups.

Targeting

The user group I’m focusing on white collar work teams that can complete work in distributed locations. While remote working provides convenience to these teams, allowing them to work on their own time and schedule, it creates challenges for team management. Employees are less socially connected, while it varies among different teams, it is more difficult for employers or managements to cultivate culture in these teams.

Design Goals

I developed 3 goals based on my research to help me guide my design decisions:

1. Help folster healthy company culture, build or strengthen relationships among employees by facilitating healthy social activities.
2. Increase visibility and perception of the work environment.
3. Encourage movements and place change.

Design Sketches

From last quarter, I have a series of concepts. My research was focused on evolving social norms in the virtual workplace, and how it is connected to the lack of non-verbal signals. After talking to a few experts, I realized that Virtual reality or Mixed reality is the most suitable way for my thesis. And since I have always been interested in the area, I decided to take the route. Here are a few reasons why I chose this approach:

1. Mixed reality enables spatial interaction, users would be able to perceive on-verbal signals like physical proximity and body language in telecommunication.
2. This approach leverages existing space at home as interfaces. By using architectural functionalities, users would be able to have a healthier workflow.
3. This approach also allows live visual reflection on office activities, which would increase employee’s sense of connectivity and social presence.

Here are some of my initial ideas:

• What if we can have a virtual lunch room where we can view who is in the room and join the conversation if we want to?

the virtual ‘lunch room’

Users would designate certain spaces in their home to use as ‘lunch rooms’. When they join the room with their MR glasses, they would be able to see on-going group conversations and decide whether they would join. They can also change groups by waving hands in different directions to scroll. Or they could wave up to dismiss and have their lunch break by themselves.

• What if we can have a virtual public space where we can join spontaneous conversations?

‘public hallway’ at home

Users would designate certain spaces in their home to use as ‘public space’ in their virtual workplace. The systems will match them randomly to other people/groups in the company for a casual chat. They can decide whether or not they want to join by approaching or waving to dismiss.

• What if we can turn our limited space into a multi-reality hub where we can separate our personal life and work life better?

white board turning personal space more professional

Even users who live in small apartments could turn their home into a workspace by using mixed reality. There would be a visual block on personal items like bed, dirty cloths, etc and replace it with work appropriate visual contents.

Design Research- Participatory design workshops

I had a more clear direction in design, which was to design virtual rooms for remote teams that can host different types of activities. However I was a little stuck on design, because I did not know what team building activities that are more effective and that people really enjoy doing. I also didn’t know what avatar I should use to visually represent people in a virtual workplace. I looked at some competitor products like Spatial, Arium, and Ohyay, but it did not feel right for the experience I’m trying to design. It was the point where I needed to get more input from people that have more team building experience and insight. I planned a participatory design workshop to loop in potential users.

I did 3 separate workshops with 8 participants in total. I recruited these participants from personal networks, Facebook groups, and LinkedIn connections. The participants all have remote work experience for more than a year, had experience or clear knowledge of VR/AR, 3 of them are in management roles.

Objectives:

1. Design virtual activities for remote teams together
2. Find appropriate visual representation of people
3. Learn more about current team building activities in remote teams, brainstorm on what could there be in the future
4. Learn more about people’s expectations and interests

In these workshops, I directed them to imagine themselves in a future where we are continuing working remotely, and we are wearing AR glasses on a daily basis. We first did a sharing on what they are currently doing/planning in remote teams to connect with their co-workers. From there I encouraged them to imagine what team-building or social events could there be in the future. Before moving to building their own virtual activities, I asked them to walk around their home and think about where they want to be while participating in those activities.

Findings

1. Most people chose places outside of their workstation to build their virtual activity. Many chose the living room because of the open space, some chose their yard for gaming that requires more movements.
2. Most people find facial expressions the most valuable non-verbal information for them, physical proximity and body language are also often rated high importance. They often choose facial expressions + one other choice when asked what are the 2 most important non-verbal cues. The second choice is most likely to be dependent on their personal experiences.
3. Everyone voted that facial expressions are ‘very important’ non-verbal cues in in-person interactions, but not everyone chooses the avatar option that would reflect that when asked to build their own experience. The majority of people went with profile pictures or 3d avatars with a cartoon feature. Some expressed that they feel more comfortable and less stressed hiding behind a ‘filter’, knowing they are not being watched. Others said they do not necessarily need to see their coworkers facial expressions in these more casual situations.
4. Different teams are establishing their own team building rituals. Dylan’s team for example, do lunch chats every Monday and Friday to check in to see how everyone is doing, what are people working on, and just give people a chance to have more casual conversations. Jessica’s team does virtual events like cooking or workouts together.
5. Most people are trying to recreate the experience like when they are back in office, so there might not be a specific activity for team building, but more just like sidetalk and casual check-ins.

Another pattern is people are relying more on games in team building, many have mentioned they do games with their teammates to get to know them outside of work. Some build their scenario playing games, specifically participants with more experience in AR/VR expect to have more gaming experience.

visual results of the ‘future workplace co-design’ workshop

Design iteration

The future for this product is set to be 5 years from now, when Mixed Reality glasses are weared daily. While this is not a promised future, it is a plausible future. I’m aiming to use this design to speculate and imagine how things would be like in the near future if certain white collar groups continue to work from home. Would companies still see team culture as something that is valuable and worth cultivating? How might they cultivate team culture in a remote team when no one has never seen each other face to face?

In this version of iteration, I created several different virtual rooms. The content of these rooms are developed through co-design sessions. From what I learnt from the participants, and pushing a little on experience design, I decided to have these rooms to showcase what team building activities could look like in MR. The form of the rooms will be represented as abstracted orbs before the user enters it. The color and structure of the orb would represent how things are going in the ‘room’. Depending on how many people and how loud they are, the sphere would change from blue to pink. And depending on how close the user is standing to the orb, the structure would change. Users would be able to decide whether they want to join the room based on the visual.

the new ‘water cooler’ zone

When they enter the rooms, they would see their coworkers in their profile picture or live video. Depending on who is actively talking, they would be represented differently. For example, in a game of 10, users would only see the videos of the team when it’s their turn. The other team would be represented more abstractly in the back. This would reduce the overwhelming feeling of getting eye gaze from too many people and create a more relaxing experience. (Bailenson, 2021)

team of 10 playing ‘code name’

For this version of iteration, I also added other parts of the experience. To avoid creating an experience that is pushing everything to users immediately to their direct view, I used ‘spatial notification’ to contain different types of notifications. This way, it would encourage the users to move around more instead of sitting in one place, and it creates more spatial interaction that creates a mental break for the user.

user will only be seeing these notification when they look at certain part of their space

Storyboard

In order to better communicate my design concept, I decided to make a storyboard and showcase how this system can help facilitate team building from the lenses of a new hire that does not usually enjoy socializing too much.

Bob is a new hire that is not too interested in socializing with people at work. He just wants to get the work done and get paid. Upon his onboarding, he opted in for only casual chats and gaming. And for the first few times, he dismissed the chats too. After a few encounters, while he was waiting for his coffee, he decided to have a chat with Jessi who is also on a break. Jessi encouraged him to RSVP for the HH night that day. Because he had a fun chat with Jessi, he decided to try it out. During the happy hour, people took turns to share cocktail recipes. Because everyone has some materials at home, they were able to make some easy cocktails and try it out. Bob was glad he did not have to commute or get dressed up to have some fun. At the end He actually had a lot of fun and so he opted in more team activities and started to enjoy connecting with his coworkers more.

Next steps

For next steps, I will continue with designing more detailed interaction by using different prototyping tools. For the final production of my design, I plan to make a video based on the storyline presented in the storyboard.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates :)

Please feel free to leave comments or thoughts about this topic, or drop me a line at sfei0620@uw.edu if you want to talk more!

For the first part of my thesis, please view:
https://feishao.medium.com/enabling-spatial-behavior-in-virtual-workplace-7ff9af2d542