Picnic

Work-life imbalance was already a pervasive cultural issue in the U.S., but constraints imposed by the pandemic have intensified this imbalance and its effect on people. Work and personal spaces have been coerced to act as one, a lack of definition in the day has led to people feeling overworked and serendipitous workplace moments have all but disappeared.

To create a successful intervention, we designed our app with remote working professionals’ and learners’ well-being in mind, using research-backed persuasive design techniques to effectively encourage them to build better boundaries between work and personal life.

We focused on making our users more mindful of their work-life boundary and how it feels to enforce it, as we heard from our users that this boundary is generally weakened when working and learning from home. Specifically, our app strengthens users’ boundaries through subtle mindfulness activities we call Picnics. The user is prompted at the end of their workday to complete a quick exercise of their choice in order to ritualize and solidify the boundary between work and leisure when working from home.

At its core, our prototype utilizes the psychologically-backed technique of embedded design. By framing mindfulness exercises as quick and fun activities to complete at the end of the day, this psychological method promotes subtle but deliberate change in users’ attitudes and mindsets.

We began this project by conducting several rounds of user interviews to build a foundational understanding of people's experiences working and learning from home. Take a peek at some of the user research methods we adapted and used below.
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‍Metaphors: This exercise (adapted from the New Metaphors toolkit from Imaginaries Lab) was designed to help surface the ways users think, feel, or behave in regard to specific concepts related to remote working and/or learning. Participants were given images that represent specific metaphors and a list of concepts related to remote working or learning. For each of the concepts, participants were asked to skim through all of the images in the set and make note of any that resonate with them in regard to that specific concept.

Mind mapping: To learn how people unconsciously connected two themes that emerged in our initial research, we had participants create two separate mind maps on the themes. We then engaged participants in a detailed discussion about the similarities and differences of the two maps.

Through affinity diagramming of the user data, we came to three main insights that would drive our work:

1. The lack of a clear boundary between work and home space when working from home makes it easy to overwork.
2. The absence of a commute causes stress as people lose hidden, mindful time that segments work and personal life.
3. Disruptions can help people realize when they are working too much.
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Based on this research and the problem we uncovered, we imagined an application where the user defines their ideal work-life balance and is prompted to engage in defined leisure activities based on this definition.

The impact of these activities on the user’s well-being would be reflected in a self-created avatar. Also, users would be able to share their activities with friends to help overcome the norm of everyone always being “on”.

In the following iterative design process, we performed three stages of prototyping and testing to verify our hypothesis and design decisions and to gather qualitative and quantitative data on how users think, feel, and interact with our product. In each round, we synthesized feedback from users and improved our design based on it.
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At stage 1, our goal was to get quick and actionable feedback on the app's high-level concept and user flow. To do this, we first sketched a low-fidelity prototype of our app and tested it on ten participants using the Wizard of Oz method and a Think-Aloud protocol. Based on the user testing results, we summarized two key insights: 

1. Several ideas and concepts need to be reframed to help users better understand their in-context definition.
2. Participants want more flexibility and control over the activity type and timing.
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At stage 2, our goal was to get a better understanding of how users enjoyed the experience we presented and their willingness to use the app. Particularly, we wanted to explore what activities our users were interested in and what reflection prompts better engaged users in mindfulness. To do that, we came up with several parallel designs for the activity and reflection pages and tested them with users. We performed another round of user testing using the Think-Aloud protocol. We found:

1. The survey was overwhelming and unfriendly to those with fluctuating work schedules.
2. Participants were confused about what ‘adventure’ meant (original language for "Picnics").
3. Participants preferred the new 'micro-adventure' prompts that had a lower barrier to completion.
4. Participants showed some interest in engaging in a post-adventure reflection but wanted to do it easily.
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At stage 3, we conducted an experience prototyping study by sending instructions via text messages to our participants over two days to simulate the activity prompt concept of our app.

We came up with a list of six activities, three focused on mindfulness and three focused on low-level physical activities. The prompts were sent to the participants at their specified after-work time. We then conducted follow-up interviews with each participant to get a deeper understanding of their experiences. In this round we learned: 

1. People didn’t realize how beneficial activities were until they tried them.
2. Being disruptive helped people to realize when they were working too much.
3. Unexpected and novel prompts increased curiosity and engagement.
4. Social accountability made participants more likely to complete activities.

The final experience begins by telling the app when you want to stop work. Then, you create an avatar who will accompany you throughout your wellness journey. After selecting some activities you might be interested in, you go on with your day and wait for a notification. At your designated time, the app will notify you that it is time to end the day and prompt you with an easy, enjoyable activity specifically designed to help you transition from work into leisure time.

Every day you get a new set of activities to choose from. For example:

Just start wandering: Take a quick walk and try to find something new you’ve never noticed before
‍Doodle time: Doodle and uninterrupted line with your non-dominant hand for 2 minutes. Have a look and see what you can see in the doodle.
‍Stretch your legs: Hold the stretch for the number of people in your life you are thankful for and maybe a little more.