Challenge
Solution
”Companies are facing challenges in sustaining organizational culture while embracing hybrid-work, driving huge cost in talent management.“
A B2B gamified plug-in(SaaS) application aims to enhance distributed team collaboration and build a stronger team culture in a hybrid/remote work context.
* This work is an on-going project, we are in the engineer phase.
Project Brief
Unity-Next is a B2B plug-in(SaaS) application that aims to enhance distributed team collaboration and build a stronger team culture in a hybrid/remote work context. It offers a virtual scenario for distributed colleagues to have continuous interaction as they grow themselves, contribute, and harvest in their flourishing company garden.
This is an outcome of 1-year research and design process. We spent the first half year researching on the current landscape of work and predict trends, pain points, and opportunities for the future of work, and the second half year designing Unity-Next as the solution of one of the pain points, company culture weakness driven by hybrid work. This is a continually-evolving project.
Website: https://www.unitynext.tech/
Project Info
Project Type: Product Strategy, Product Design, Service Design, UI/UX Design
Duration: Jan, 2024 - Present
Status: Developing
Project Team
Team of Two:
Crystal Chen, Bella Li
(Junling Zhuang, Xiaoheng Hu are now joining for engineering process)
My Contribution:
Desk Research, Data Analytics, Concept Generation, Strategy Design, Experience Design, Business Plan Development, Visualization, Storytelling
Research Process - 1st 6 months
Diverge
Converge
Database Gather
30+
Case
Studies
20+
Literature Review
80+
Observation Reflection
4
Understanding of the current global work situation
Survey & Interview Research Structure
Diverge
Converge
Survey Data Collection
75+
EngagementPosters
6
Focus Group Experiments
3
Individual Interviews
40
Information Synthesis
Test & interation
Archetypes
4
Insights & Observation
5
Future Solutions
5
Design Process - 2nd 6 months
Product Direction
("Assumption")
Competitor Research
30+
Stakeholder Interviews
25+
Product Position
4 Main Functions
MVP Test, Onsite Interview & Observation
Iteration 1
Onsite Interview
Iteration 2
Focus Group, Observations
Iteration 3
Pitch & Interviews
Iteration 4
Current Outcome
"
Unity Next is a B2B plug-in(SaaS) application that aims to enhance distributed team collaboration and build a stronger team culture in hybrid work.
We offer a virtual scenario for distributed colleagues to have continuous interaction as they grow themselves, contribute, and harvest in their flourishing company garden.
Context & Problem
Hybrid work is the main trend in the current and future of work.
It shows an upward trend, with a proportion exceeding 50% based on Gallup Research.
Based on our previous research, hybrid work can be divided into on-site oriented hybrid mode, and remote-oriented hybrid mode.
Each mode will have certain impacts on employees, which leads to different future actions required for organizations.
We picked "Develop new strategy to build team culture in hybrid work" as our focus.
Hybrid work weakens company culture, which affects company turnover rate, leading to extra costs.
Culture
Turnover
Cost
Understand & Empathize
We researched 30+ competitors in the market and interviewed 25+ stakeholders in both early career teams(user perspective), and executed leadership teams(client perspective).
Takeaway 2
Clarify Benefits: What benefits will companies benefit from our service, in terms of income, efficiency, productivity, quality, or creativity?
Takeaway 1
Narrow down: Select a hybrid/remote team-centric organization within a communication-intensive industry to implement the concept.
Takeaway 4
Nudge, not Force: Reduce product usage pressure: encourage employee participation through a more gamified incentive system rather than coercion.
Takeaway 3
For Management: Our goal is to help hybrid companies prioritize building cohesive teams for business success, rather than emphasizing social demands and friendship among employees at work.
Pain Points
Pain Point 1
Lack of shared work experience, weakens their sense of belonging.
Pain Point 2
Reduced communication and interaction, decrease passion and engagement in work.
Pain Point 3
Difficult network building to receive timely feedback and assistance from colleagues.
Ideation - Solutions
Product Functions
Detailed Function Tree
Incentive System Logic
Testing & Iteration
Iteration 1
Test the product concept's viability by observing and interviewing target users in real work situations.
Iteration 2
Test the user journey from both user side and management side.
Iteration 3
Test the user journey again, assess the business model and technical feasibility.
Iteration 4
Test the rationale and acceptance of the incentive system.
Key Features
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01
Shared Company Scenario
A gamified virtual scenario for company to share working experience, visualize contributions, and harvest efforts by growing personal "flowers" on the project land of the company garden.
-
One company one garden; one project one land.
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One project member get one flower in the land; one person could have multiple projects.
-
Flowers level-up by time and water drop from teammates, converted to honey when project ends.
Incentive System
An incentive system for employees to convert the outcome of the flowers into relationship-building-oriented rewards to facilitate them to have continuous interaction with the team.
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Flowers’ level converted to honey when project ends.
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Use honey to exchange different relationship-building-driven benefits.
02
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03
Internal Network System
Company internal network system, with algorithms to recommend profiles for employee to connect.
Employee Analytics
As a B2B platform, Employee Analytics offers company reports weekly, monthly, and annually to evaluate hybrid teams and team members' performance and engagement, to adjust their future people and culture strategy.
04
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