about
the project
As a control measure for preventing burnouts and encouraging a healthy and productive work culture during COVID-19 national Lockdowns, Zendrive wanted to curate an experience which reinforces a positive work culture across the board.
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To implement this unconventional request, my team and I created 'The Vault' which was a friendly addition to every professional's home office.
Defining the
Problem
#WorkFromHomeLatency
Through the second wave of COVID-19 in India, Zendrive observed an imminent pain point in their WFH strategy - employees were feeling burnt out, uninspired, demotivated and overwhelmed.
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In other words, they observed that the employees are feeling a bit of lag in keeping up with the stress of the pandemic. This was hampering their physical health, exaggerating mental fatigue and reducing their clear and productive drive.
" Our employees were stressed and overwhelmed because their personal and professional lives were suddenly intertwined "
- Zendrive Executive
Employee
Employee
Interviews
To get specific insights into the problem, I conducted interview sessions with 5 employees. All participants were from different teams and came from varied countries.
The most ideal research method would have been Participant Observation, Dairy Study and other contextual methods. However, due to health concerns, I decided to use participant interviews.
The research goal was to understand employees' daily habits, personal and professional roles, home office setup and related pain points.
My research questions were as follows:
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What is your role at Zendrive?
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Can you tell me more about your duties?
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How many meetings do you have in a day? Who all are involved?
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Do you have the right home office set up to do your work?
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Do you feel more distracted or more productive working from home?
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How do you draw a boundary between your personal and professional responsibilities throughout the work day?
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Is there any negative impact on your health because of working from home?
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What kind of a house do you live in? How many people do you live with?
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In which part of your house do you work? Are there more than one?
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Describe your home office to me?
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Describe your typical schedule, both personal and professional?
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What changes have you seen in yourself through this transition?
Insights &
Idea Generation
After analyzing the data, I was able to identify some common patterns that needed immediate attention. These patterns were turned into opportunity areas by generating insights from them.
The 4 core insights were:
​Employees did not have the office setup required to have a smooth workday.
Employees used lots of notebooks, paper, & post-its throughout their workday.
Employees felt more fatigued, tired and stressed at EOD than before.
Employees were not completing both their personal and professional tasks.
Divergent Thinking and Ideation
How Might We Questions
I conducted an ideation work session with my peers to generate divergent ideas by using How Might We questions.
How might we make their home office be just as good as their traditional office?
How might we enable employees to organize their thoughts in a structured way?
How might we motivate employees to take frequent breaks between meetings?
How might we help employees to keep a tab on their tasks by creating good habits?
The Final
Solution
The Vault Box
We realized that we needed a very unconventional approach to this problem. We couldn’t have a very cookie-cutter thought process because that would make the solution redundant.
The Vault became our solution to solve this WFH Latency issue. It was created with the sole intent of becoming your work desk’s best friend. Designing a curation of physical products vs. digital artifacts was widely accepted, mainly because physical products feel like gifts to enjoy whereas digital products feel like corporate campaigns to endure.
focus
clarity
harmony
fitness
solace
simplicity
The Final
Products
Work, Mind and Body
To alleviate the employees’ problems and to enable a better (and personalized) work environment for them, we designed all products to solve various problems related to work, mind and body. Each product was created with a specific agenda and tackle a very specific problem.
With this, the entire curation of products comes together to create The Vault as a compact WFH Kit.
The Habit
Tracker
About 40% of our daily actions are habits! The Habit Tracker is designed to inspire a proactive attitude and repeat desirable actions for better mental, physical and spiritual habits.
Designed as a calendar, employees identify and visualize their goals in 12 different life dimensions, eg - mindfulness, creativity, stress, family, etc. Employees assess their satisfaction (between 1 - 10) in these aspects and identify micro-goals that will help achieve higher satisfaction everyday.
