Intelligent Management of Hybrid Workplace Spaces
Timeline: 5 days/40h | Role: Solo Product Designer
Problem
Employee headcount growth during the pandemic amplified pre-existing space allocation challenges
After the pandemic, an advertising agency needed to manage their employees across two headquarters while avoiding conflicts. Having tripled their headcount during the pandemic, they faced:
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Overcrowded offices
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Parking space shortage
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Employee frustration with hybrid return
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Multi-location management needs
Desk Research and Proto-personas
The Challenge of Accommodating Three Distinct Work Profiles
Through desk research and benchmarking, we were able to define our foundation for reaching a solution by mapping:
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Pros and cons of each work model
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3 proto-personas to guide product development
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Best and worst practices in management apps
Ideation
Feature Prioritization Based on User Needs
Through brainstorming, we sketched out potential features and used dot voting followed by the MoSCoW method to prioritize. We then moved to wireframes focusing on features categorized as "must-have" and "should-have". At this stage, we decided to prioritize delivering a mobile application.
Usability Test
Uncovering Communication Gaps and Enhancing User Flows
Through usability testing rounds with the wireframes, we diagnosed and improved:
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Ambiguous text and confusing terminology
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Incomplete user flows
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Missing user feedback on certain screens
Final Result
Delivered Solution
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
Research helps, but user testing is essential to uncover flow blind spots
Research is crucial for a better overall understanding of the context and identifying core problems and user pain points. However, it's undeniable that user testing, even at the wireframe stage, was essential for mapping issues in the initial flow.
Identified Opportunities:
Due to prioritization, we had to set aside some features mapped during our research. However, we believe these would be valuable additions in a future app version or product scaling, particularly:
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Development of a web application
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Implementation of a gamification system to ensure users of alternative transportation feel equally recognized by the company
