Key Lime Interactive / Fall 2023 Experience Studio
Overview
Key Lime Interactive (KLI) is a user experience and customer experience research, strategy, and design services agency. KLI is an entirely remote company and struggles with keeping employees engaged and connected.
Our team was tasked with defining connection and exploring what that looks like in the context of KLI’s remote workforce; with an emphasis on both primary and secondary research, we are to reach a solution that best fits within KLI’s current workspace.
Roles
Team Lead
I lead a team of five through a semester-long project that resulted in a mid-fidelity prototype. I oversaw our project plan sprint execution, and sponsor communication.
Sowmyashree Bharathan
Damaris Adeniji
Seoyeon Lim
Daphnee Delisha

Userbase

Every KLI employee is a stakeholder in this project. This range includes anyone from the company President to a UX Researcher. Designing with multiple perspectives and stakeholders in mind is key for this project; We gained this perspective through our user interviews, user testing, and workshop.

Project Milestones

We separated our project into three milestones to understand the current state of remote working at KLI, explore which potential design solutions could aid KLI, and the creation of a final prototype and solution.
1. Understand how Keylime employees currently experience connection and explore alternative methods that have been effective elsewhere.
2. Understand which kinds of design solutions can help KLI employees feel connected, engaged, and motivated to continue using.
3. Finalization of design and the narrative of our project.
Milestone 1: Understand how Keylime employees currently experience connection and explore alternative methods that have been effective elsewhere.

Secondary Research

To gain a deeper understanding of remote work and its impact on employees, our team employed various research techniques including a literature review, comparative analysis, and social listening (monitoring online expressions relevant to our problem space).
  1. What are trends and statistics saying about remote work, and how can we parallel those insights to Key Lime’s work environment?
  2. How have other companies or solutions approached connection in their context(s), and what can we take from them?
  3. What are people saying online about their remote working experiences, and does this match with our primary research?
Literature Review
Social Listening
Comparative Analysis
Our goal of conducting a literature review was to comprehensively investigate the impact of remote working environments on employee productivity, satisfaction, and well-being. By utilizing statistical analysis, we identified key trends and patterns.

Most importantly, we found that building community and engaging that community is integral to hybrid or remote-based businesses. This can characterize itself through company events, or verbal commitments from company to employee to create a sense of psychological safety and bond. (Harvard Business Review).

Another key factor in overall satisfaction is employee relation to their working environment. According to a survey done by Gallup, “Employees who don’t work in their preferred location have significantly lower employee engagement, alongside higher burnout and desire to quit.”
The goal of social listening is to hear what people are saying about remote work, as well as to find common themes between those expressions. Our aim was to find pain points, as well as positive experiences so we could better inform our user interviews and overall understanding of this problem space.

Our selected platforms for social listening were Reddit and Twitter/X as they primarily cater to those wanting to share their experiences via written format. To find comments relevant to our problem space we looked at /r/RemoteWork from Reddit and used keywords such as, “Work from home”, or, “Remote Work(ing)” on Twitter.

In response to a post, How to keep your remote team connected? (What is your experience?), Reddit users voiced that they, “...kinda miss seeing facial expressions”, as well as, “creating connections as an introvert is hard”, and, “Try and test out different kinds of remote team activities, which can be little and short interactions (no business focus). The most important thing is that you have to make an effort and always get feedback on how your team is feeling about the things you are trying out.”

Twitter users took to the emphasis we put on different aspects of remote work, with user Andrew Swiler expressing his frustration with the focus being on results and work rather than personal connection.

User Malcom Little speaks to the importance of nurturing meaningful connections in the remote workplace.
High Level Overview
The goal of analyzing other applications and services in this domain is to understand how different companies tackle the issue of connection; Through this, we hope to gauge what works, and what doesn’t, and understand how it may apply to Key Lime’s context.

Our team explored a plethora of companies whose overview is now no longer relevant. Highlighted are the most relevant applications to our eventual final design.
Kumospace is a free virtual office and events platform that allows users to host virtual events. It's used by organizations worldwide to host virtual events, including Happy hours, Virtual games, Virtual conferences, and Major conferences. 
Gather is a video-calling app that helps remote teams build a virtual office. It allows multiple people to have separate conversations at the same time. The app provides a customizable 2D map that can accommodate up to 500 users. 

We felt that these applications accomplish their goal of making remote work more exciting and engaging, but we didin't think these applications work in Key Lime’s context. As Key Lime has voiced that our solution should ideally coexist with their current Google workspace, we believe we can make a better solution while incorporating aspects of a virtual office working environment.
Milestone 2: Understand which kinds of design solutions can help KLI employees feel connected, engaged, and motivated to continue using.

Primary Research

To understand firsthand how Key Lime employees experience connection in the remote workspace, our team conducted interviews with 8 employees. Our team was able to gain a broad yet targeted look into the KLI experience as our users ranged from UX Researchers to Managers at different stages in their careers and time working at KLI.
  1. Understand the current state of remote connection at Key Lime Interactive and identify the related user needs for KLI employees.
  2. Explore existing, and wanted, software & services used by KLI.
  3. Identify pain points in forming relationships with other colleagues
Affinity Diagramming
Journey Mapping
Prioritization Matrix
Following our interviews, it was important for our team to synthesize our data as quickly as possible to not lose any valuable insight. Our team utilized the Affinity Diagram method to do so.

Through our Affinity Diagramming, we identified a significant number of similar responses when it came to how Key Lime employees feel about connection in relation to remote work. 
  • Many employees want connection while a minority don’t care much for connection at all. There is an opportunity to bridge the gap of connection, but not everyone is actively seeking connection.
  • Company events can feel forced and inorganic.
  • “Hallway connections” or informal interactions are missed from in-person working experiences.

Following Affinity Diagramming, our team created a user journey map using our persona Kayla. Kayla serves at the base for our journey map, with specific quotes coming directly from our user interviews. The purpose of creating a user journey map was to help visualize pain points and identify where in a Key Lime employees workflow those problems arise.
  • Overall engagement and interaction with other employees are low throughout the workday.
  • Pain points are present throughout the workday, and low-points in emotion tend to  frequent in both stand-up meetings and solo work (unengaged, seeking connection).
  • Work events like Pre-Happy hour are poorly timed and often fall when employees are just trying to go home.
Through our data analysis we formulated “How Might We” (HMW) questions to reframe problems found through Affinity Diagramming and Journey Mapping into opportunities, aiming to generate innovative solutions. Collaboratively, our team developed a prioritization matrix using the HMW questions. We progressively refined our HMW’s based on feasibility and value, ultimately determining the significance of focusing on HMW’s that offer high impact with a moderate level of effort. This approach facilitated a comprehensive assessment and ranking of potential solutions.
The most feasible and valuable HMW was: How might we mirror in-person (hallway) experiences to the digital space?

‍This HMW was identified through secondary and primary research data and was chosen due to its value, feasibility, and our interest in the scope.

C-Suite Workshop

Our team had the opportunity to run a workshop with Key Lime Interactive’s C-Suite. Our main objectives for this workshop were to gain perspective from company leadership regarding remote work, create a space for idea generation, and leave with a solidified plan moving forward.
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Participants: Company Chiefs, Chairs, and/or Directors at KLI
Time: 1 Hour
Tools: Miro Activities, Pencil & Paper
Activities: Mad Sad Glad, S.C.A.M.P.E.R, Crazy 6s
Mad, Sad, Glad
  • Each participant created a sticky note for each Mad, Sad, and Glad. These answers were aligned with the context of remote working, to get our participants to think in the framework of our problem space.
  • This was a good way to break the ice and segue into subsequent activities.
S.C.A.M.P.E.R
  • SCAMPER is an acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Purpose, Eliminate/Minimize and Rearrange/Reverse.
  • Each participant engaged our problem space, thinking through different mental models; Our goal was to get our participants to think outside of the box.
Crazy 6 Sketching
  • Crazy 6’s was an opportunity for our participants to draw from S.C.A.M.P.E.R and put ideas to paper. Our emphasis for this exercise was to be as creative as possible.
  • The sketch featured above is of 6 different ideas from KLI leadership on how they are thinking about the problem of remote work.
In retrospect, the workshop provided insight into the perspective of Key Lime leadership, which also provided actionable feedback for our team to continue with a growth mindset.

Low-Fidelity Mockups & Testing

With the success of our workshop and data analysis, our team moved forward to continue ideation and create low-fidelity mockups. These mockups were generated from our guiding HMW, how might we mirror in-person experiences to the digital space. Below is our consensus low-fidelity mockup which was subsequently tested upon as well.
  • This design offers a more comprehensive virtual office space while accounting for user status, calendar & bulletin board features, and provides connection to KLI’s  Google Workspace.
  • Allows for unforced ways to connect with fellow Key Lime employees.
  • Shared spaces provide a solution that can integrate within Key Lime’s current Google Workspace ecosystem.
  • These spaces bridge the gap between in-person connection and communication to the digital space.
Milestone 3: Mid-Fidelity Design and Validation  

Testing

To evaluate the understandability and effectiveness of our designs, our team conducted user testing with three KLI employees. This process allowed us to assess how easily our designs are understood and how well they function in real-world scenarios. Through this testing, we gather valuable insights from the users, enabling us to refine and enhance our designs for optimal usability and effectiveness. 

Final Iterations & Design

Our final designs take from all prior secondary research, primary research, data analysis, workshop, and user feedback. Most importantly, our designs are informed by the voice of the user and keep them at the core of our designs. Our team feels that these designs accomplish the task extended to us at the beginning of this project. Below outlines our main changes.

Our aim was for this main screen and our overall design to be a welcoming virtual space that bridges the gap between creating informal connections that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Having the opportunity to see what your co-workers are up to, while having the ability to playfully interact with them makes reaching out to others much less intimidating and forced.

Based on feedback from our usability testing, we added an icon displaying your own current location, as well as room signifiers that better communicate the purpose of each room.
Poking
  • When a user hovers over another user's icon, a message appears in accordance with their current status. If the status is green, it indicates that the user is online; if it's yellow, it signifies that the user is away; and if it's red, it denotes that the user is currently on do-not-disturb.
Notifications
  • Upon receiving a notification, whether it's a poke, a message, a call attempt, or a posted event on the bulletin board, users will see a pop-up with an indicator. Clicking on the notification will directly take them to Google Chats, Google Meets, or the bulletin board.
Room (Zoomed)
  • This screen is an example of what a room looks like while zoomed-in. The highlighted room we are in is the cafeteria. If you enter a room marked green, your icon will automatically switch to green. The same applies to rooms labeled red. If you've been inactive for a period, your icon will automatically change to yellow.

Based on our research, Key Lime is already actively organizing various networking events. To enhance the enjoyment and potentially boost participation among employees, we've opted to introduce a bulletin board feature. This platform will allow users to craft posters and RSVP events.

Designing these posters will be straightforward, with preset fonts and images. Below we can see that three events are posted on the bulletin board including a Lego Building Event, a Yoga Class, and a Cat Showcase.

Selecting a particular poster on the bulletin board will highlight and enlarge it for improved readability. This action will also prompt the appearance of the RSVP button, allowing you to schedule the meeting in your Google calendar and navigate directly to a confirmation email.

When designing the bulletin board feature it was important to our team that it integrated within Key Lime’s google workspace and calendar. Having both services work together creates more freedom for the user.
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