The Day Changer

The Day Changer aims to help workers who work from home in setting stronger boundaries between work and personal life allowing them to focus during work and relax in their spare time without the two infringing on one another. 

Role
Two sessions of context mapping, competitive analysis, journey mapping, storyboarding, wireframes, final mockup

Team Members
Klimson Pin, Sarah Taylor, Amber Palmer, Ben Walker

Project Timeline
April - June, 2023

Overview

This project was an assignment that was to be completed as a requirement of the university unit and was to be done over the duration of the semester in a group. This challenge was one out of three topics provided by the design brief that we could choose to tackle and we chose this topic due to how this problem space is especially relevant to the time that we were in.

The Problem

With the recent rise of workers working from home due to Covid-19, the dynamics of work has changed where now the workplace and home are merging and the boundaries between the two are blurred which can cause many issues for workers when balancing their work and personal life.

Problem Statement: "How are workers affected by the blurring of boundaries between home and work caused by working from home"

Research

To obtain the opinions and experiences of workers who were affected by this, me and Amber recruited 3 out of the 8 participants consisting of 2 primary school teachers and 1 web developer. In these sessions we used various context mapping activities such as collages, venn diagrams, and cognitive mapping over zoom to allow the participants to share their experiences. The sessions were recorded and interesting findings were noted to be later reviewed.

Research Insights

  • The lack of boundaries was a common factor in poor work/life balance when working from home. Many participants found that being at work provided a physical boundary between their work and life, but once they were made to work from home those boundaries broke down. “That was the blurring, when was the finish time at home?” - Natasha

  • The blurring of boundaries between work and life is within the workers control. The issues that the participants faced were mostly within their control therefore it's not necessarily the change of environment to blame, but themselves. “Difficult with break times, finishing times, to schedule those in, cause sometimes you’ll keep working and you actually have to stop and think okay, I should take a break now.” - Monica

  • Improving work/life boundaries when working from home ultimately relies on self-discipline. The issues that many of the participants faced when working from home were mostly caused by a lack of discipline or organisation in their daily schedule. “Like i’ll take a break and have some lunch then i’m just like ‘oh, i’ll just play one game,’ then I get carried away and it eats into my work time" - John

Redefining The Problem

The insights revealed that the blurring of boundaries came down to the discipline of the person themselves. The normal working conditions of the office provided a physical boundary but at home those boundaries must be upheld through discipline and habit. This reveals that the issue is internally within the person and is worsened by the external distractions of their home. 

Hence we created a revised problem statement to guide our design process.

“Workers who work from home need ways to create habits and develop discipline to separate their work and home life so that they can be productive whilst working and be able to relax in their spare time.”

By using these insights we created a criteria as a guideline when coming up with our solution to make sure we satisfy the user’s needs. The product must...

  1. Allow the user to ultimately make the change themselves.

  2. Help the user set stronger boundaries between their work and life.

  3. Help the user create habits so that they can have the discipline to maintain those boundaries.

At this stage of the project, the second phase required our groups to split in half so me and Amber teamed together and used what we had learned to tackle the market research and ideation phase!

Competitive Analysis

We then conducted SWOT analysis to see what products/services are out there that address this issue so we understand what kinds of products already exist and possible gaps that we can explore to make our design solution different and innovative. In our research we analysed the Serene and Structured app.

Opportunities we found

Both applications offer day planner features that we intend to incorporate into our solution since they greatly enhance organisation, which is essential for maintaining the boundaries between work and life. They also assist users in staying focused and aware of what they are supposed to be doing at any given moment.

There were other features that we took onboard as potentially useful in our solution, however the analysis of the weaknesses is where we were able to envision how we can differentiate ourselves from the competition.

Structured App

Weaknesses

  • The app becomes tedious to use as the user has to input everything manually.

Opportunities

  • Make the process of using the app and logging their activities more automated and frictionless.

Serene App

Weaknesses

  • Only creates an optimal environment whilst working on their device but doesn't address how working from home and the blurring of boundaries can affect productivity.

Opportunities

  • Raise the user's awareness on how much time they are wasting or overspending on tasks so that they can correct their ways and be more productive.

Ideation

Storyboard

To start our ideation process each group member came up with two storyboards each of different solutions that address the needs and pain points brought up in the researching phase. This process allowed us to visualise not just how the solution works but also how the user would interact with it. This process helped us pick a solution that provides a positive user experience whilst addressing the needs, and after reviewing all four storyboards we decided on my storyboard called “The Day Changer”.

However there were some problems we came across…

Problems we identified through the user journey map

  • The process of the user selecting what they were doing was tedious and this friction is what we wanted to avoid as it was a prevalent issue in the Structured App.

  • How do you measure work/life balance? What does it mean if someone receives a rating and how does it help them do better?

How we addressed these issues

  • The app will send a notification during certain periods of a user's schedule such as lunch breaks and start/finish times. We chose these times to notify the user as this is when the blurring of boundaries is most prevalent. However rather than selecting what they are doing, the app will just monitor their screen time and other metrics and give a report on the home screen on their performance.

  • Instead of them receiving a score we measure their progress in the app through how well they adhere to the given schedule that they have created and accepted. The app then shows logged hours for work and personal activities and then shows the actual hours recorded for both and gives feedback.

User Journey Map

We then created an user journey map that details how a user would interact without our concept and the steps they would take whilst showcasing potential pain points and needs.

Wireframes

Once we have finalised on the concept of our app we then started creating some wireframes and played around with how we are going to layout the various features in our app.

User Testing

Once we had established our concept and created the wireframes, we then began the user testing with the same participants that we had done our research on. We had two tasks for the users to complete and our main goal was to assess the efficiency of the concept as the other apps that we researched were tedious to use. Afterwards we ran a quick interview about their thoughts and opinions on the concept.

Tasks

1. Create your new work schedule by syncing your work calendar and adding your daily tasks.

2. Check when lunch is and then check your statistics.

Here is what we found…

Insights

  • Users found that by syncing their work calendar and adding their daily tasks separately, it made them feel that they had more time for the daily tasks that they wanted to get done. “I feel like if I was to use this I would add more of my hobbies in the daily tasks section, and have the app just make it work around my work calendar” - John

  • Users found that the work and home time spent feature on the home screen to be a little confusing to understand as many didn’t understand at first what “scheduled time” meant.

Home Screen A/B Testing

Based off the user feedback, we then created a second iteration of the home screen where we changed how we were going to represent the hours that the user spent on work and home activities. We then tested the two against each other and asked a follow up question to see which one was more effective at conveying the information.

Research Goals

1. Which iteration is the easiest to understand.

2. Which iteration is the most effective.

Tasks

1. Explain what this feature trying to tell you?

Question

1. Which iteration was easier to understand and why?

Insights

  • Users found the correlation between the scheduled time and time recorded to be confusing in version A. They were also confused by the wording “Time Recorded” which could suggest that the time has already been recorded and not still continuously recording.

  • Users found that the representation of the time spent in relation to the scheduled time was easier to understand in version B and it also provided visual feedback, so the user knows throughout the day if they spend more time on work or personal activities.

The Winner: Version B

High-Fidelity Mockups

Key Takeaways

Separating ourselves from the process

During the research process and design of the wireframes there were times that our own beliefs interfered with how we interpreted the insights. This is due to all of us just coming out of lockdown therefore we all felt that we could relate to what our participants were bringing up. Although our own perspectives can be an advantage in being empathetic we also have to remember who we are actually designing for and what their actual specific needs are, and not the ones we think are important.

Simplifying the solution first

As we were in the process of designing our solution we had lots of different ideas and different variations of those ideas that could be added on. However we then quickly began to create ideas that weren't necessarily addressing the pain points brought up during the research and we had lost sight of them by trying to create brand new ways of solving the issue. It's important that we always remember the actual pain points that need to be addressed and what our problem statement is throughout the entire process so we actually design something that solves not supplements.

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