TEAM TEDDYDesign Thinking

HYPER ISLAND DMM CREW 7

02/2016

Aksha Sachdev - Clara Aparisi - Gabriel Negri - Patrick Turtchin - Sofia Nihlén - Viktor Olsson

INTRODUCTION

AGENDA

Intro

1. The Team ➔ Teddy's Canvas➔ The Briefing and Criteria

2. Diverging➔ Understanding the Consumer➔ Problem Definition➔ Ideation

3. Converging➔ Ideas➔ Prototyping and Testing➔ Final Ideation➔ Pitch Day & Feedback

4. Conclusion ➔ Individual Reflections➔ Team Process

We are Team Teddy, a team formed by Digital Media Management students at Hyper Island, UK.

Our objective is to present the best solution to Mural's expectations about remote work in the future. In this exercise, we will use Design Thinking to guide our solving problem flow which is based on a human centred project.

HELLO!

Who are we?

Clara Aparisi

Gabriel Negri

Patrick Turtchin

Viktor Olsson

Sofia Nihlén

Aksha Sachdev

ROUTINES

➔ Check in

➔ Energize

➔ Reflect

➔ Check out

TEAM STRENGTHS

➔ Experience in academic writing

➔ Different ethnicbackgrounds

➔ Varied professional skills

➔ Adaptable in nature

TEDDY’S CANVAS

VALUES

➔ Listen➔ Respect ➔ Help➔ Share➔ Be Playful ➔ Be Honest ➔ Be Clear➔ Ask questions

SCHEDULE

➔ Show up at 9.00 am

➔ Start work at 9.30 am

➔ Lunch at 12.30-1.30 pm

➔ End day at 5.30 pm

Short summary of the team canvas. Which is the team framework of how we decided to

work together as a team.

GOALS

➔ Meet the deadline

➔ Deliver a product and presentation

that makes each one of us proud

and content

➔ Have a good teamwork, enjoy the

process

➔ Take notes, share insights

➔ Do documentations throughout the

process

Needs & Expectations

➔ Structured process, clarity in what we are doing and how we are doing it

➔ Leave room for flexibility

➔ Manage time during tasks and assignments

➔ Create a happy and positive work environment, with time for fun and energizers

➔ Discuss goals, every week

➔ No work during weekends

People and Roles

Clara - Time Manager

Viktor - Group Planning overviewer and time manager

Patrick - Making us as a team move forward, if we get stuck

Aksha - Definitions of Value and Subjects that important for us as a team, to define

Gabriel - Team Representative in meetings

Sofia - Team Culture, reminding the team of allowing everyone to be heard

“The success of teamwork.

Coming together is the beginning

Keeping together is the progress.

Working together is success”.

Henry Ford

TEDDY’S CANVAS

Documentation

During the first days of our team project, we learned the importance of having clear schedule and deadlines to work with.

Some of the members had used Gantt-Chart before, so we decided to make one. However, we ended up giving up, since the plug-in for Google Drive just did not work. Thus, we created a Team Diary both for documentation but also with the pinpointed activities at hand day by day. We decided to do check ins and check outs everyday, as well as try to have reflections regularly.

We created a team folder on Google Drive that helped us collaborate with ease. On days we worked remotely we kept in touch over Slack, while catching up on Google Hangout for bigger alignments. We also made a group on Facebook Messenger which helped us share media files such as images instantly.

The client

Mural a company that works with remote design work.

Asked us to come up with an answer to their question:

“With the lense of feeling smarter and closer together

how might we design the future of remote working”

The Brief & Criterias

In order for our team to get started with the planning and outline of the project we had to make sure that everyone was on the same page and had understood the brief in the same way.

Since we all had taken part in the video conference with the client and read the brief individually, we started with a small discussion based on our insights and opinions on the two. We reached the conclusion that we should read the brief again together out loud. This helped us get in sync and find common ground on what the brief was asking us to do.

During the same time, we were a bit stressed as we had been asked by our industry leader to put together a schedule to show how we planned to manage our time throughout the project lapse. Because we all recognised the importance of syncing on the brief, we decided to postpone the time management in favour of the brief. Reading the brief seemed like a simple task, but it turned out to be difficult to get everyone on the same page.

When we finally started to actively listen to each-other and asking questions like: “What do you mean?” “Can you explain more… ?”; instead of assuming things, we found a good flow. We got on the same page for the brief but also came together as a team.

As we saw the power of syncing on tasks, we decided to go through the learning outcomes as well, so that we were all on the same page there as well. We reviewed and interpreted the criterias from Hyper Island, using the insights from the criterias to rephrase the outcomes to make it clear for us to understand.

In order for us to deliver an end result that not only satisfied the client, Mural, but also met the standard that Hyper Island, we took time for the brief and criterias. Looking back, this was important to us as a team, as we synced on own expectations and values as a team as well.

UNDERSTANDING THE CONSUMER

Attempt at remote working

“That’s it. I’m coming back to Hyper!”

We tried remote working ourselves to gain insight on the feeling and process of remote work. Some stayed at Hyper, the others went to different cafés and settings like the train station. We set a time for Google Hangout, which ended in a havoc of loud noises, low power and poor Internet connections. During this time, we also tried to share our insights with each-other through Mural. Though some had a more positive experience, the joint conclusion in the end was that we should just meet back at Hyper to have a more efficient and functional process together. This experience made us reflect on how difficult remote work could be, which guided our questionnaires. Aksha’s quote above sums it up rather well.

Desktop research and benchmarking

“Wow, I didn’t even know this tech existed!”

As our brief asked us for the future of remote work, we decided to make thorough research to get a sense of the current state of tech for remote work. We looked at competitors of our client, read up on blogs and articles and watched YouTube-videos. A great insight was that a lot of tech that came into our minds as being the future was already being worked on, such as Microsoft DVE which offers possibilities to have virtual meetings and tech that allows you to touch and control objects in another physical space. This gave us a lot of energy and when we realised how far tech has come, we decided to push ourselves to dream even bigger. The agreement within the group moved us to focus on how to bring digital into the physical world rather than trying to digitalise the physical word, which much of the innovations we found did. We had an “aha-moment.

technical problems remote work?

UNDERSTANDING THE CONSUMER

Organisation

Flexibility

Tools

Misunderstanding

Distraction

Decision

Collaboration

Communication

Efficiency

Trust

Human contact

BARRIERS & DIFFICULTIES

Procrastination

Brainstorm

Guidance/help

Co-planning

Feedback

Understand others

Knowledge sharing

Quantitative survey

People who have not experienced and do not want to

People who have not experienced but would like to

People who have experienced remote work

After understanding the brief, we interpreted the need for a solution that can help people think and connect with others around the world. But to do this, we needed to go deeper into the realities of our consumer’s needs and problems. Therefore, we conducted a quantitative survey with multiple choice questions to three distinct targets:

Qualitative researchHowever, the quantitative survey was not enough to improve our learnings about the alternative way of work. So, we conducted a qualitative research with some open-ended questions which were answered by 13 interviewees who have experienced remote work. Below, are some quotes from the research that helped us define the problem:

The findings that came from the interviews, we were able to find commonalities with the quantitative survey which led us to our next steps of defining the problem.

The outcomes of this survey, fulfilled by 105 respondents, were really rich and we could realize the main discomfort points, the barriers and working difficulties when operating remotely. Aside we highlighted the key outcomes.

“I’m not very effective when we [colleagues] miscommunicate”

Hedvig, 25, Motion Graphics Creative

“Interpersonal relations will always be dependent on physical presence”

Sid, 34, Edtech Entrepreneur

“When you have some personal preoccupations you tend to try to solve them before to solve job issues”

Erik, 24, Freelance Designer

PROBLEM DEFINITION

Key problems

After compiling the research insights, we found that there were a number of commonalities in the 3 three target groups with regards to the barriers and needs when working remotely. To move our analysis further, we clustered the problems into groups based on their nature and occurrence.

We ended up with 12 major clusters: Decision Making, Miscommunication, Flexibility, Human Contact, Efficiency, Collaboration, Trust, Tools, Organisation, Work Space, and Emergencies.

As 12 clusters were difficult to manage and felt widespread in nature, we decided to try and focus the clusters further to arrive at a more focused problem which we could use towards our final goal.

We divided ourselves into groups of two, working closely with four topics per group to engage with the task at hand.

5 Why’s

Within our groups of two, we applied the method of the5 Why’s to look deeper into each problem statement.

At this stage we had an interesting discovery, when we dived deeper into the 12 problems, we realised that the root cause of several of these seemed to be the same.

All the problems and needs related to communication, such as decision making, miscommunication, human contact and trust were deeply connected to a human need of belonging and being acknowledged. It seemed that remote workers felt a serious lack of these “real connections”.

Similarly, another subcategory, the need for flexibility and the problem of separating work life from private life, arose from a deeper need to better manage time and increase focus.

Lastly, the set of issues that focused on organisational gaps, efficiencies and co-worker collaboration, pointed us in the direction of performance and quality of work.

PROBLEM DEFINITIONFUNNEL OF FOCUS

WHY

Work Quality, Time Management &

Real Connections

HOW

HOW MIGHT WE

The 5 Why’s helped us identify subcategories and areas of problems and needs. To move forward, we recognised a need for focusing on the ‘How’ to point out our direction in which we could review our options and possibilities.

We defined our goals more strongly by analysing what was tangible to solve. This helped us frame our problem statements with greater empathy to the needs of our consumer.

Work & Life

Balance

Creativity

Collaboration

Stimulate and facilitate creativity in remote

working?

Facilitate balance between work and personal life for

remote workers?

Have a remote experience delivering human contact

and promoting collaboration

IDEATIONBrainstorming to solve 3 HMW

After spending an afternoon on brainstorming many HMW’s and sorting them into categories, we ended up with 3 HMW’s. The morning after we met at Aksha’s place to work on the final brainstorming. We first did some more silent brainstorming and awaited Gabriel (who was in a meeting with the other team reps). After that we did a team brainstorming and started ideating on the suggestions we had to move towards prototyping.

Refining ideas

We ended up with two ideas for prototyping that we felt reflected the content of our HMWs and could address several of our ideas. We split up in 2 groups of 3 (Sofia, Clara, Aksha, Gabriel, Viktor, Patrick) to put together something visual and concrete. The end product of this was two big sheets with illustrations, post-its and keywords. One prototype of “Spirit Animal” and one prototype for “Brain Coin”. This process helped us in trusting other’s capabilities and the efficiency of splitting into small groups. Both prototypes focused on how we can bring digital into the physical rather than digitalizing the physical. The brain coin focused on how to enhance human2human interaction in remote work and the spirit animal could help both working alone and teamwork.

IDEAS

Spirit Animal

Spirit Animal is an AI device that accompanies you in life, learning from you, teaching you and supporting you.

It can help you brainstorm, find data, reflect on previous experiences you have shared together or even help you with self-care and mood.

It can be compared with a mix of your perfect co-worker and personal assistant, also substitute you at meetings.

Intelligent Personal Assistant Camera and Projector

Real time language translation

Voice command & response

Big data syncing & analysis

Interacts with other IAS

The brain coin is a small device that you attach to your temple as show in the image below.

When two persons put on their brain coins, the two brains can connect to share the five senses of smell, feel, sight, hearing and tasting.

This means that you can switch between the two persons’ experiences and impression in real time.

Brain Coin

No distance barrier

Real time transmission

Share experiences

5 Sensories

PROTOTYPING & TESTING

Client inputs

We had a mid-project brief with Mural, in total 10 minutes long on Zoom. Presenting our prototypes and our gathered insights, we asked for feedback and thoughts. The client was positive about the prototypes but concerned, asking for what they could start develop tomorrow or in the next year with our product in mind. Based on this feedback, we realised that we needed to do a backcasting for the final pitch to guide our client from today to the product of tomorrow. We also realised that we should have prepared ourselves more to answer the questions in the best way.

Industry leader inputs

During the process, our industry leader Andy has been available for us to get some feedback and insight on mainly tools to move forward. He also served as an interviewee and gave feedback on the prototypes as well as participated in our mid-project brief to come with some feedback.

Consumer feedback

There were several point in our project process where consumer feedback and insight helped us guide us forward. Before even moving to prototyping, consumer feedback had been used at two occasions. We gathered new consumer feedback until the last days, where they helped us redesign our storyboards for explaining the products into videos. These were act out situations in which the product would be helpful. This was then tested again and gave more favourable results for us to understand how to show how the product can add value to people’s lives.

PROTOTYPING & TESTING

Creating personas helped the team understand and reflect on consumer needs. The three personas created differed from one another, as one had a more open mind and was an early adopter of new tech, whereas the two others were more conservative and perhaps restricted in their tech use, but the two also had particular habits and wishes compared to the other. Doing customer journeys, we realized the needs and problems of each persona. Thus we could adapt to and approach different consumer groups in the best ways possible.

CUSTOMER JOURNEYPERSONAS

With the customer journey, the team found out that with our rather future-thinking and tech-savvy ideas, most of the personas would need a learning process to get to actual use to the products. As the personas start to understand the products better, the usage and usability would increase and they would start to adapt the solutions (products) to their respective needs. We gained good insight, such as that tech-savvy users might not end up being the power user.

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF REMOTE WORK?

The definition of remote work was an important step for the team, as it guided the process of prototyping. We found the definition in the wording “Working alone together”. To reach these words, we analysed several kinds of people and concepts of remote work. Remote workers were working far from their offices, if they had any, or far from their homes or in public places such as coffee shops. With the interviews, surveys and insights, the team found out that the concept of working remotely was not actually determined by location, but rather by how they could, or could not, collaborate with their teams or clients. With this definition in mind, we created three personas that were all working remotely but in different contexts.

FINAL IDEATIONMAKING THE TOUGH CHOICE

The process of making this choice was rather stressful for all of us. One of the major reasons for the stress was the time constraint, we were only a day away from the client pitch and still working on double prototypes. Looking back, the weight of detailing and validating two ideas until the very end made us feel somewhat burnt out.

At this point we had already received enough responses from our various tests which indicated that the idea of “Brain Coin” was exciting and experiential in nature, but as a lifestyle product and not as a remote work product. As the aspect of remote work was only noticed when we asked for it, it would not be the main reason for consumers to buy it.

Furthermore, the features of the second idea, Spirit Animal, were perceived to solve issues of remote working more clearly as compared to the Brain Coin. We also reflected upon that the fact that the idea of Artificial Intelligence has been in research for a longer period of time, giving more credibility. This also supported our interviewees to see the concept as possible and not just fiction.

After shortlisting the Spirit Animal over the Brain Coin idea we put it to further test to ensure our concept was clear and understandable to the audience. Our observations from the previous prototypes had made us realise that storyboards were difficult to follow for a complicated product as ours. Hence we recorded some short videos which helped us in testing but also to present in the pitch to the client. Click the following link to watch the final video of our product: https://youtu.be/DXQMdTe2nT4

Key Factors

Below diagrams aims to point out the major factors that led us to our final decision of which one of the two ideas we were planning on pitching to the client.

35%

20%

25%10%

10%

Consumer feedback

TimePressure

ExistingResearch

Closest to Brief

Near v/s FarFuture

In the morning before the afternoon pitch, we started rehearsing the presentation. Aksha and Patrick represented Teddy’s team at the presentation.

The feedback that we received from the client was quite similar to the check-in we had a week before. They liked the idea and concept but they wanted to see something that can change their company tomorrow. We had taken this into consideration, making a backcast for them to follow our suggested steps for them to move towards the future. Despite this, some of their feedback after the pitch was that “five year plans” are useless for a company.

The next day, we had a feedback session with our industry leader Andy who shared his insights to us as individuals and group, as well as gave feedback to our idea and process. The biggest learning of our team from Andy was that we missed the opportunity to tell a story. The first idea “Spirit Animal” was very strong concept that could create a very good story to engage with our client. We completely agreed with him and we promise to improve that in the future.

In the afternoon we had our final team termination that included our last reflection and individual feedback. It was a very honest process and we end up very happy and proud.

PITCH DAY & FEEDBACK

CONCLUSION

Teddy’s team experience mapHow our team was feeling on each step during the process

Week 1

Crew culture creationAcademic writing

Individual research

Week 4

Personas creationStoryboards/Prototype

Choose main ideaVideo prototyping

Final pitchFeedback/Group session

Team Development

Week 3

How might we?Team Development

BrainstormingStoryboards/Prototype

Mural check inDefine remote work

Week 2

Brief and Insights from itGantt

ResearchQuestionnaire/Interviews

InsightsReflection

Patrick

Aksha

Viktor

Sofia

Clara

Gabriel

"The process of understanding different cultures and backgrounds helped me to become a better active listener and better team player. Beyond my experience and projects that I have worked for, the team helped me with other points of view; the reflections and feedbacks sessions exposed that blind side that I did not notice. During the whole process, I have learned design thinking methodology by participating of all decision making and working actively with all tasks. Fell glad of taking part of such high performance team.”

“I had seen the evolution of our team, from day one until the end and we created a very strong group, making me confident, growing and learning together. I have learnt that the process is more important that the actual idea and the ups and downs are good learnings to push me and the team forward. My biggest learning is a good communication, expressing your ideas clear and respecting each others, make a team stronger and easy to trust. I will miss this team.”

“During the whole process we faced some situations that demanded us to reach agreements for the team even not everybody consented. But those moments were really important for my personal development, because they made me left my comfort zone, expressing my points of view, thoughts and ideas. Likewise, is really amazing to discover others backgrounds and learn with the experiences of them. Lastly, the presentation of the pitch affected me as well, since it was my first speech in english for a public. I liked very much the result and the support of the team that made me felt more confident. Let’s practice more and improve it!”

INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONSWhat affected me the most during the process?

“What affected me the most was how important communication actually is especially when you are working in a team with various cultural and professional backgrounds. My biggest take from this process is to try to explain myself in more ways than one. Just because you think you are being clear does not automatically mean that the person you are speaking to understands what you are saying. Try not to take it personal if you are not being understood in the way you attempted to, but rather try to see the challenge in explaining yourself in different ways as a valuable lesson.”

“For me, the different backgrounds of my team members both helped and hindered. The challenge for me then, and what affect me, was to realise this and actively work with the team to turn the backgrounds into help and not hinders. This was possible from a very open and direct communication between the members, something I have learned to value even more during the project. I also learned a lot about myself and how I act and react in different situations. For the future, I will be attentive to others needs as much as my own, and be open about it.”

“What affected me the most was my first hand experience at witnessing the power of Team Culture. In the past during group work at my university and my workplaces my focus had always been on being a contributing team member, who helps and stays involved. It is only now that I’ve realised that work effort alone isn’t the ingredient for success. A team of talented, hard workers can fail if they don’t make the effort to create an atmosphere that is respectful and honest to each other. The Keyword for great group dynamics is Active Listening. And I’m in the process of growing better at it.”

INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONSWhat affected me the most during the process?

A 10 minute-podcast in which the team discusses the process and group dynamics.

https://www.mixcloud.com/epletviktor/team-teddy-podcast/

A 1,5 minute-video in which the team explains the work process through images.

https://youtu.be/QhdZD9bCwNc

TEAM PROCESS