MIXED METHODS UX RESEARCH | UX DESIGN | SERVICE DESIGN
Future of Work
Elevating Employee Onboarding
Innovative AI-powered solution for an employee-centred onboarding experience
Role: User Researcher, Product Designer
Timeline: 14 weeks
Client: NEC America
Tools: Research - Zoom, Otter, Qualtrics, MTurk, Miro, Google Suite | UI Design- Figma
CONTEXT
NEC America is a pioneer in using technological innovations to create long-lasting change.
NEC America, A Japanese tech conglomerate that creates innovations to improve safety, efficiency and security. They wished to focus on leveraging AI to create innovations in the space future of work.
BRIEF
How might we make individual and team work engaging and exciting for hybrid workplaces?
APPROACH
Using a design-thinking approach, I led research including 6 interviews, a card-sorting exercise, and a survey with 1500 responses. Analysis and synthesis crystallized problems, needs, and design principles, incorporating methods like customer journey and activity mapping. Ideation followed, exploring opportunities through customer journey and reverse brainstorming. The project underwent 3 rounds of prototyping, informed by feedback from 12 stakeholders.
I actively contributed to UI design and customer journey mapping.
METHODS
1. Secondary Research
To gain a broader understanding of the shifts in the workplace post-pandemic, I conducted secondary research that included the following:
1. Trends Analysis
Looking at industry reports and trends in future of work - from accenture, HBR, HR Executives, IBM.
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2. PESTLE Analysis
To understand how different forces, political, environmental, technological, economic and social conditions in the society are shaping and influencing work.
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3. Stakeholder Mapping
To map out the various primary and secondary tools, people, and processes involved in workplaces, to help identify the primary research participants.
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4. Competitive Analysis
Comparing other productivity and workforce management tools and how NEC’s tool compares to it.
Competitive Analysis
Trend Reports
Stakeholder Map
PESTLE Analysis
Insights from Secondary Research
Pandemic has led to…
#1
Increased disruption in work life balance leads to increased exhaustion and lowered productivity.
#4
Increased employee turnover with declining trust in leadership stemming from a lack of transparency and communication.
Surge in new technologies for work in the market but workplaces have not evolved with the latest technologies.
#2
#3
Most productivity and workforce management tools focus on professional interactions and enterprise needs, overlooking employee-centeredness and the value of fostering social connections.
2. Qualitative Research
From secondary insights
Lack of work-life balance and low trust in leadership, both posed a good business problem and
user problem so to unpack this, I decided to conduct primary research with the following two methods:
Unmet user needs in terms of work life balance and low trust in leadership
1. User Interviews
To cover depth across wide variety of audiences with 6 participants having different levels of seniority. This was done to understand attitude shifts since pandemic and challenges with work-life balance, productivity, wellbeing and relationship with leadership
​​2. Card Sorting
To understand employees changing priorities since the pandemic.
​​Sample Size
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n= 6
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location = USA
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job type = corporate
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Profiles = newly hired employees, senior employees, employees with children, manager
Cost of hiring a new employee is greater than retaining existing employee
Card Sorting
Insights from Qualitative Research
Lack of…
Clear communication + Informal human interaction
#1
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less productivity
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increased exhaustion
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reduced wellbeing
- Manager
"
With remote work, there are fewer chances to ask employees, “Hey, how are you?” and then pick up on important cues as they respond.
Lack of…
Support from senior management
Junior employees feeling excluded
#2
-Newly hired junior employee
"
When remote, it feels more like a task for senior managers to help junior hires… I still don’t feel I'm being useful to the company because I’m still in the process of figuring things out…
3. Quantitative Research
To understand who was the most affected by the problems and generalize our findings, I conducted a survey on Qualtrics.
Sample Size-
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n= 1000
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location = usa
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job type = corporate
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profiles = newly hired employees, senior employees, employees with children, manager
Some Survey Questions and their Responses
Insights from Quantitative Research
Newly hired employees are the most likely to feel:
Heightened isolation
Lack of transparency
Lack of communication
Yet they they rate their wellbeing as good.
Survey Results
These problems- heightened isolation, lack of transparency and lack of communication are compounded when there’s a lack of support from managers, zoom fatigue and delayed feedback
Survey Results
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS - SERVICE BLUEPRINT
On mapping a new hire’s journey into an organization, I realized that lack of support and transparency, and communication gaps start emerging during onboarding.
Ideating different audience types and the outcomes they can achieve with Solutions Content
Service Blueprint of Onboarding
Challenges emerging during onboarding
Activity mapping for a new hire
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS - DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Therefore for a good onboarding experience, it is essential that our solution:
Fosters Open Communication
Helps build connections
Encourages feedback
Personalized
Experience
PROBLEM REFRAMING
HMW make onboarding a more trust-building process that fosters networking, socialization and collaboration?
Curating a more personal, collaborative and less exhausting onboarding.
IDEATION
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Reducing redundant information at Day 0 with AI parsing employees' information from resumes and other sources like social media etc
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Exciting goodies based on personal interests during pre-boarding.
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​Ex- An employee who loves hiking gets a hiking coupon.
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A digital AI buddy for making connections with people based on similar interests for socializing and networking.
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Reducing exhaustion by prompting breaks using intelligent voice analysis.
PROTOTYPING
Different fidelity prototypes to seek feedback and refine solution.
"Let's ditch the corporate feel and embrace a more natural interface. Why not make your platform social, fun, and inviting? That's where your unique value lies!"
- Dean, IIT Institute of Design
SOLUTION
Preeby
AI-Buddy providing an interactive and employee-centered onboarding experience to new hires, focusing on Social Interaction, Collaboration and Networking.
One-click Document Submission
Personalized experience
Using Preeby, the employee is able to onboard seamlessly by spending less time on paper-work and more on socializing and understanding company culture
#1
#2
AI recommending work breaks
Personalized Experience
Preeby uses advanced AI to detect from employee’s voice their stress level and gives recommendations to take break.
Fostering Connections
Encourages Feedback
Fosters Open Communication
#3
Employee specifies the kind of help they need & and Preeby crawls the employee dataset giving recommendations of people to meet with.
Preeby, smartly suggests common times to meet as well on the basis of calendar availability.
Fostering Social Interactions
Helps Build Connections
Personalized Experience
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Preeby, on the basis of mutual interests and hobbies, recommends people to connect with.
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Impersonating in- person casual socializing, users can broadcast messages to make plans.
#4
IMPACT
​Preeby on launch is expected to lead to 5% increase in employee retention.
5%
"
The project is extremely well thought out. It is easily something that NEC can build and scale up on. The subtle integration of AI and having an onboarding buddy seems impactful to tackle the issue of Zoom fatigue.
- NEC America Customer Experience Manager