Bubbly

Type: Interaction Design Research Team Project
Client: IAT 333 Interaction Design Methods, SFU / Procurify
My Role: Graphic Design, Developer

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Bubbly is a social connection platform specifically built for Procurify. This platform was built after 14 weeks of research, including interviews, cultural probes, and participatory workshops.

Week 1-2: Initial Observations

We visited Procurify to begin observing how the company worked. We familiarized ourselves with the office layout and team placements. Through casual conversations with employees, we found that a common frustration was the weak communication between teams.

Week 3: Quick and Dirty Ethnography

We returned to Procurify for more observations and informal interviews. The person who provided research access for us worked in the development team, so we gained more insight into their daily routine. From that insight, we learned that weak communication between teams was a result of the growth of Procurify. This meant that not all employees can attend company meetings to know what is happening and provide input. We then widened our design focus to center around communicating ideas to all team members at Procurify.

Week 4: Preliminary Personae

From our informal interviews with one member of three different teams, we were able to produce three personae. The three different teams included the development, marketing, and people teams. From the personae, we were able to learn the daily routine of the members. We noticed that their daily schedules were filled with meetings. This was interesting because members said that meetings were not always effective and they felt like it was just a waste of time. This lead us to focus our research more about why these meetings were ineffective.

Week 5-9: Cultural Probe

Cultural probes did not work very well with Procurify because it did not fit into their usual workflow. Even though the cultural probe was made for an individual to complete, participants invited their team members to complete their probe together. This helped us understand their corporate culture and prepared us for the participatory workshop.

Week 10: Participatory Workshop

We invited the members of Procurify to take part in a participatory workshop. We designed the workshop to validate our design focus. We ran two workshops simultaneously which was open to all members of Procurify. One was for customer-facing departments while the other focused more on the productfocused departments.

Week 11: Concept Exploration

We developed three ideas: an all-in-one communication tool, AR goggles for team management, and a digital bulletin board.

Concept 1 was not unique and was too ambitious. It also did not solve their fragmented communication strategy.

Concept 2 was impractical as each employee would be required to wear this device. There are also less intrusive ways to learn about a team member’s profile and schedule.

Our team decided to pursue Concept 3: a digital bulletin board (see next slide).

Week 12-14: Final Concept Development

We chose to bring the idea of a digital bulletin board forward. Their space is currently setup in a way that limits communication of progress between the customer-facing and the development teams of Procurify. From our participatory workshop, we noticed that they used one communication channel for a single purpose. This concept addresses these problems by providing a single space that links both sides of the office to promote more efficient communication.

Final Concept

Bubbly.

An interactive project management webapp.

Bubbly is a digital board for announcements and projects where bubbles are used to represent them. Users can comment on an announcement bubble, they will be represented by smaller bubbles attached to it. Project bubbles show what the project is and its progress. They are also colourcoded based on their teams.

Desktop vs. Team Board

On the desktop version of Bubbly, users may only view and manage the projects their team has created. They can add team members, notes, and tasks to complete. On the Team Board, all of the announcements and projects will be visible to all to see on a touchscreen display. Employees will be able to login by finding their name in the list and then entering their password. Once they’re logged in, they can then comment on announcements. They may also tap into announcement and project bubbles to view more details.

This User Experience Concept shows how the interface for the Team Board will look like. Interact with the User Experience Concept

We created an initial prototype highlighting the key features of the Mission Control/Dashboard. Contact me to request access to the actual prototype. (Username: dash • Password: Procurify1.)

The Announcement page allows employees to reply to bubbles to create comment chains. Employees can also react to the announcement with emojis.

The Project page allows teams to display their progress in the project and gives them a space to describe what they are working on. This helps include other teams in the loop about the development of Procurify.