COFFiT
An interactive experience aims to motivate employees to enjoy casual talks and interact with each other
Duration
Aug 2021-Aug 2022
Designed By
Effie Wang
Committee Members
Adam Smith
Mike Strobert
My Role
(Solo project) Concept Development,
Interaction Design, 3D, UI/UX
Design Tools
Blender; Figma; After Effects;
Photoshop
Overview
COFFiT is a tablet-based interaction space that motivates employees to enjoy casual talks and interact with each other by simulating real coffee room and after-work activities.
The Problem
With COVID-19 keeping the world apart, many are exhausted, disengaged/disconnected and have difficulties with collaboration and communication. Remote work leads people to feel isolated and lose the team cohesion. People are struggling to maintain morale and keep their teams enthusiastic and committed from afar.How might we bring individuals and teams together and fulfill organic connections with each other in a remote work setting？
What’s the biggest struggle with working remotely?
As the COVID-19 pandemic creates new challenges and changes in employees' work and personal lives. The results from the state of the remote report 2021 showing that: the majority of responses reflect a collective concern about not being able to unplug, followed by difficulties with collaboration, communication, loneliness, and productivity while working remotely. Those pain points will become more acute as companies are planning on permanently allowing remote work.
The ‘Zoom fatigue’ is real
Zoom fatigue is a unique kind of exhaustion that occurs when people participate in teleconferencing calls for an extended time period. More and more employees complain that spending too much time in meetings hinders them from being productive at work.
Secondary Research
Insights after interviewing 8 people
Existing Tools On The Market
Conceptualizing the solution
A new solution for the new normal
Create a vivid and engaging environments that are playful, neutral, accessible and whose primary activity is conversation — use various game mechanics to present a unique opportunity for spontaneous talks that lead to unexpected conversations between employees who may work in different hubs and rarely have the opportunity to engage with one another.
Avatar Customization and Interaction
When users first enter the application, they can create avatars that best represent themselves, with a variety of customization options available.
Creating the unique avatar is a important step before
entering the coffee room and interact with others. Having a personalized avatar can help the user transport the energy of their emotions and feeling of togetherness
Join a Public Coffee Room
Users could either join a public room or create their own room and invite others to help them decorate it. Each public room has a maximum of 15 active users due to its feasibility. Users can set their status and see who else is online on their team through the profile panel, making it easier to find the people they want to talk to.
Join the Conversations at anytime
In order to have spontaneous conversations. Everyone in the room can see what others are talking about as the message pops-up, just like people can hear others in the real room.
In order to avoid “zoom fatigue” and seperate the conversation from work place, instead of having the video, users can only type the message or turn on the audio in the coffee room. The audio messages will be auto generated and present above your head.
A small interaction control panel enables users to select animation to greet and wave at each other or even start a spontaneous dance
Increase engagement
In order to encourage the users to stay at least 10-20mins, users can earn real gift cards by collecting coffee cups. They will also found cups in random places by exploring the room. To increase the social interaction with one another, users are able to give the cups to friends or colleagues.
After-Work Activities
Users can play table tennis in this area to better simulate the experience of being in a real break room. In the game room, they can have voice conversations. When the table is occupied, users can either watch the game or wait in line.
Create your own room
To increase engagement and collaboration, users can also create their own room, either for a large or small group. Decorate the room with other team members for any team social events, allowing users to develop organic relationships through non-work related collaboration.
Visual Design
Conclusion
The main goals for the project are to help the remote employees to have spontaneous conversations and the opportunity to engage with one another. Coffit provides a vivid virtual coffee room to people who are currently feeling isolated from work-from-home, allowing them to interact with people through a variety of ways such as games, animojis, collecting coffee cups, etc. By summarizing from the usability testing done on the interviewees, the final solution and design have managed to alleviate the proposed problem, and thus, achieving the objectives for the project. As remote work becomes trending across all industries due to pandemic, more solutions are occurring to provide people with a better work-from-home environment. This solution represents a useful proposal through its virtualized, 3D stylized coffee room design with a number of gamification methods for interactions.