SIMAC Narrowcasting
Encouraging recognition and positive feedback within SIMAC IT NL.
The Assignment
Design a narrowcasting system for use within SIMAC IT NL that can promote positive feedback and employee recognition.
Context
SIMAC IT NL is a Dutch family-owned organization that focuses on providing IT services for companies of all different sizes. Our assignment is focused on motivating their personnel to give each other compliments on good performances and work. Motivation is a big factor in companies like these, and with more than 700 active employees it is important to keep structure and motivation strong throughout the company.
Role: Visual / UX Designer, Researcher
Timeline: 12 weeks (March - June 2023)
Tools: Figma, HTML/CSS
The Process
This project was part of my ICT courses. I worked on this project in a team of 6 people over the course of 12 weeks, structured into 4 sprints based on the Double Diamond method.
As children, we learned new skills through the external motivation we received from other people like our parents. Take as an example riding a bike, when we fell, we wouldn't hear: "You're doing it wrong, you need to do this right!", but more encouraging words like: "You made it all the way there, great job!" As we get older, we receive less and less such validation, and our achievements often go unnoticed, while our mistakes receive all the attention. SIMAC IT NL wants to change that in their workplace and encourage a culture of accentuating the positive.
Goals
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Provide insights related to ways of stimulating recognition and encouraging communication at the workplace.
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Recognize and encourage individual and team progress.
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Facilitate employee feedback within the company, both towards each other and towards leadership.
Exploring different directions
With the basic information we had about our project, we initially decided to look further than the original goal of encouraging positivity and discuss different sources of motivation.
For this, we researched types of motivation as well as the effects of compliments on people's minds; how can praise affect people in the office? Are there any negative effects of, say, too much praise? Is there any way that complimenting should be done to achieve the best results? These are some of the questions that arose during our research and that I looked into.
The research showed that while complimenting can have significant positive effects on a receiving person, there is a worse side to it as well, especially when done too much or without enough knowledge of the person. This can include feeling of entitlement or overreliance on positive validation as a motivator.
Because of that, it became clear that we wouldn't want to simply make people give each other a lot of compliments without substance, but to allow them to be aware of others' situations and work, so that their praise could be more meaningful.
Brainstorming: Stimulating recognition
With some direction on how our problem could be approached from our research, the next thing to figure out was through what methods recognition could be encouraged. For this we had a quick brainstorming session where the main goal was to quickly come up with all the ideas we could think of, as well as how they could work and what they might include. These ranged from ideas for a potential social app to more physical solutions like a social room or courses for the employees.
At the end of our brainstorming session we decided on three main ideas to focus on:
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Social room for employees;
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Continuous learning (Workshops for employees);
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Wall of appreciation (Narrowcasting system).
These ideas would also provide a focus for our research, so that we would have a better understanding of what they would entail and how they might be applied in our situation. My research focused on social rooms in the workplace and the effects of communication on a team, as the topic became more important for the project and a point of focus through its development.
The final concept
Based on our brainstorming, research on ways to promote recognition, and insights from our clients and a visit at the SIMAC offices, we could decide on a main focus for our project: finding a way to develop SIMAC's existing narrowcasting system to encourage recognition in the office.
Design research
With a concept for our project, the next step was to look deeper into its execution and the specifics of what it would include. This meant research into multiple topics, including visual design. Because our project wouldn't be as focused on interaction as much as it would be on conveying information effectively, the focus of the design as well as the methods of research would also be different.
Because of that I decided to focus on visual design principles such as the Gestalt principles, and analyzing design guidelines used by large companies (Apple, Google, Amazon etc.). This analysis was focused on readability and conveying information, with extra attention on guidelines for TV apps.
With more research done into other topics such as implementing a narrowcasting system and using it to promote validation, as well as SIMAC's style guide, we could start work on the design of the pages to be displayed. My part in this step was designing the employee recognition screens.
These are some versions of the screens I designed, showing individual accomplishments and team achievements.
While designing the screens, I kept in mind the following:
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The SIMAC style guide that we had access to;
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Guidelines for designing for TV screens, such as: clean design with simple content, large font sizes, avoiding very bright colors;
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The way narrowcasting screens will be used: the information will need to be quickly accessible by employees, in a casual manner.
Web prototype with page transition
C4 models
We created a model of the possible architecture of the project to more easily visualize how it would work and to better communicate the structure of the project, based on our group's previous research on narrowcasting.
We tested our prototypes to determine how user-friendly the design was, and how effective our screens would be in encouraging recognition. Sadly, we couldn't reach SIMAC employees for our test, so we decided to test with other students.
After testing, we put together our results and decided on what we should change on our screens. Because of who we tested with, the results were mostly focused on the design itself, without any large changes for recognition.
The main focus for the changes on my page was making the content stand out more from the rest of the screens, as the original design became very similar to other pages, while trying to maintain consistency.
