The route to future work

The Purpose

The project is centered around five ordinary words. These words were used to experiment and explore human behavior and memory to evolve the ordinary into the extraordinary beforesynthesizing the findings into an innovative service/product.

The approach

Our research is driven with a mindset focused on human-centered design with deep empathy toward the people we are designing for. We strive to be intuitive, recognize patterns, and construct ideas which are not only meaningful but functional and unorthodox.

The five words

To begin, each team member provided a topic that is entangled with people’s daily life through observation. With these unique topics in mind, we decided the best way to move forward is to search for an area where all five topics overlap. With connecting the dots between thosefive words, we are attempting to create an innovative service driven by human- centered data.

the assumption

After analyzing human-centered data of the five topics from a systemic perspective, we found that most of the data points toward transportation services. Following our first unsuccessful attempt to detach from the ordinary, we decided to find a more remarkable concept by interviewing people. These interviews yielded results similar to our first attempt. The responses were all based on services like Uber, driverless buses, and self-servicing cars.

word association

We created a survey to collect dataassociated with our five ordinary words. The survey was shared on social media platforms and had a total of 20 participants. After analyzing 341 different responses, we identified the top nine words most commonly associated with our five ordinary words.

reframe

We hit a wall after conducting our wordassociation survey. We realized the top ninewords were still not helping us to detach from the ordinary. After some brainstorming, we settled on creating an experiment using the antonyms for the original words.

We built a narrative using our reframed words to share in our new experiment. Once again, our goal was to see how much of our narrative people remembered. We verbally shared the narrative with ten people over the phone and asked the participant to recite the narrative over a text message 24 hours later. Our narrative contained 35 words and the average narrative response had only 22 words.

Data Distortion

With the data our team collectedthrough narrative testing, we analyzedthe responses and compared the words being used to the original. Surprisingly, negative emotions were mentioned a lot in the responses even though it wasn’temphasized in the narrative. Also, “off-grid”and “work” caught a lot of attentions.

The result

Based on the data collected, we identified ‘off-grid, work and negative emotions’ as the most eye-catching area of interest.

Step 1

Each group was given the top nine words which we identified during the word association experiment. The participants were responsible for choosing a word they thought was the best fit for each topic; off- grid, negative emotions, and work.

Step 2

We then asked each group to write a short narrative using the three words they picked.

step 3

The groups next step was to brainstorm different service concepts based on their narrative baring in mind the concept should nest the product on top of the service.

Step 4

After recording their service concepts we asked the groups to rationalize their concepts.

Step 5

All of the groups shared their narratives and service concepts with the rest of the workshop participants.

Step 6

Using stickers everyone voted for what they thought the most compelling narrative and the service.

The popular use of emotional labor

With the possible exception of Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch, very few of us have the luxury of being able to be completely and utterly ourselves all the time at work. The
rest of us are called upon to perform what psychologists call “emotion labor”- the effort it takes to keep your professional game face on when what you are doing is not concordant with how you feel. – Susan David, 2016, Harvard Business Review

The popular report of stranger interaction

The New York Times had an idea on why happiness and talking to strangers might correlate with one another. One study showed that people who interact with strangers on their commute to work have more enjoyable time and more productivity than those who don’t interact with strangers. – Elizabeth W. Dunn & Micheal Norton, April 25, 2014 New York Times

Propensity to Complain

Many people feel that they might lose their patience if they keep their feelings bottled up. This is a somewhat valid concern. Nobody wants to walk around so frustrated that they lose their temper or say the wrong thing at inconvenient times, so complaining and venting frustrations can be a far more pragmatic path to take. – Gursoy, D., McCleary, K. W., & Lepsito, L. R., 2007 Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research

Interviews

With the narrative and secondary research, we went on and interviewed 8 managers/HR from different industries. We focused on the several aspects of workers in different workspaces:

• Disengagement in workspaces

• The methods managers/HR use to deal with disengaged workers

• Emotional labor in the workspace

• The connection between emotional labor and productivity

• The methods managers/HR use to deal with emotional workers

Key insights

• Breaking down into smaller teams to focus on problems and goals

• Individual time to work on projects

• Open floor plans make it difficult to focus when multiple teams are working on various projects

• Time is given to employees to de-stress during work days

• Employees sometimes bring personal stress into the workplace

Percentage of workers feeling drained physically and emotionally relating to their work hours
(Statista Survey 2018)

Workers’ voice

We interviewed 10 workers from different companies to see how they release their stress from work or life. When it came to venting about their problems, data showed that they choose the audiences depending on the situation. Even though family or friends are usually who workers go to, they tend to not express their severe problems or stress to someone that is close to them.

What is black box

Black Box is a service that provide workers a private and safe space in the workspaces to release their emotional pressure. With a emotional responsive AI implanted, workers can have a non-human channel vent theiremotion or problems without any confidential concerns. With releasing emotional stress, workers can then provide organizations a boost in productivity.

The Package we offer

Black Box provide companies a various choices of subscription plans. A specialist will work with the company and figure out the most suitable plan due to their workspace and special needs. All the boost will be installed by professional technician.

For the firms

For the workers