Breezy Work From Home Team 3

• 

• 

  Meet the Team

Overview

We know the transition to working from home has been stressful and has come with its challenges. We want to help. As people are working from home, we have already seen a decrease in productivity paired with an increase in the numbers of hours people are working a day. Additionally, people are reporting feeling more overwhelmed as a result of working from home. These are not healthy trends, and we would like to change this. There are many management, organizational, and communication tools out there, but none of them have a focus on or even consider the customer's wellbeing. This is why we would like to incorporate work with mental health.

Team Members

Colin Ferguson is a rising Junior at Ball State University in Muncie studying Computer Science with a minor in Computer Technology. He worked on the Pro Team making the prototype. Clayton Miller is a rising senior at Franklin College studying Art History and Graphic Design. He worked on the Go Squad developing graphics and assisting with business models. Daniela Silber is a rising senior at Butler University in Indianapolis double majoring in Management Information Systems and Finance. She worked on the Pro Team helping create the prototype. Nathanael Knight is a rising Junior at Purdue University West Lafayette studying Cyber-Security with a minor in entrepreneurship. He worked on the Pro Team helping create the Prototype. Gillian Fouse is a rising senior at Indiana University Bloomington studying Psychology with a minor in Human Resources. She served as the project manager and conducted the user testing and worked on the business side of this project. Promit Allen Gomes is a rising senior at Earlham College majoring in Economics & Supply Chain Logistics. He worked on the Go Team helping with analysis, models, graphics designing and developing the website.

How did you decide on this customer segment, problem, and solution?

We started our research by contacting local businesses that we're currently working from home. We started with a basic idea, and used these conversations to direct where we were going to take it. From conducting user research, we were able to get a strong sense of the challenges employees are facing while working from home. Some of the companies we contacted include Willow Marketing, Amplify Education, and Oppilo Marketing. We discovered that challenges included lack of communication, organization, not knowing where coworkers were on a project. Using this research, we formulated the idea of combining wellness into a daily workflow. While there may be many productivity, organization, and management tools, none of them include mental health. We believe this combination is essential to a happy, healthy, and motivated employee while working from home.

How did your team build and iterate on the solution?

From the beginning when our prototype was just a few sketches, from there we have conducted user testing. As we continued to develop our prototype, we showed our progress to others to get feedback and make adjustments. We sent out surveys to understand the pivotal issues faced by employees working from home. 162 people were able to respond and helped us gain more of an understanding of challenges people are facing. These responses were then used to further develop the prototype into what it is now.

Once we figured out what all the features should be for our prototype we then began working on each feature one by one using Excel VBA. We designed each page of the application first and then added code to it to make it functional. The final application contains 13 functional pages

Key Metrics

We conducted six interviews with employees from businesses around the Indianapolis area. As a prototype, we do not have any investments into this product at this time. Our survey we sent out received 162 responses from people working remotely.

Technical Architecture

Sample Code used in demo app: This particular code was used to add Co-workers into your community along with their name, position, and randomly picked status

Private Sub ConfirmB_Click()

Dim random As Integer random = Int(1 + Rnd * (3 - 1 + 1))

If Me.EmployeeOption = True Then CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.AddItem CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.ListCount - 1, 0) = Me.CowTextbox.Value CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.ListCount - 1, 1) = Me.CowPosText.Value

If random = 1 Then CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.ListCount - 1, 2) = "Available" ElseIf random = 2 Then CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.ListCount - 1, 2) = "Busy" Else: CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox1.ListCount - 1, 2) = "Away" End If

Else: CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.AddItem CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.ListCount - 1, 0) = Me.CowTextbox.Value CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.ListCount - 1, 1) = Me.CowPosText.Value

If random = 1 Then CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.ListCount - 1, 2) = "Available" ElseIf random = 2 Then CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.ListCount - 1, 2) = "Busy" Else: CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.List(CommunityScreen.CoworkerBox2.ListCount - 1, 2) = "Away" End If End If

Unload CoworkerScreen CommunityScreen.Show

End Sub

Key Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

1. Notifications sent to manager and selected coworkers- We think being able to select appropriate team members to send notifications of finished tasks can help facilitate progress updates in a simple and quick way. With this being automated, there is no need to take time to write up an email each time you want to let a team member know your progress on a project or task. It can also serve as a quick way to track productivity and accountability for your managers.

2. Include personal goals/responsibilities for the week- At the beginning of each week, one can schedule and organize their tasks they would like to complete. There will be the option to select when tasks are completed, and it sends a notification to necessary parties and disappears from your to do list. This will keep people organized and productive with the ability to visualize the tasks they want to get done.

3. Community Feature- All coworkers will be included in a community where you are able to communicate, see their status, and priority list. The status options include Available, Busy, and Away. Having an updated status can help coworkers know when it would be a good time to give them a call. This is an important feature because people we spoke with shared that it could be frustrating trying to reach out or call a coworker and they don’t answer for whatever reason. While in the office, you would normally be able to see if your coworker is free or not, but that is not an option anymore. Being able to see their availability should improve the communication process between coworkers.

4. Priority List for Coworkers- Each member will have the option to fill out their personal priority list, and you can select each member’s priority list from your community. This will help facilitate scheduling, especially when it comes to projects. A team member will be able to compare their priority list to their coworkers and make necessary adjustments. We included this feature because many people were expressing their frustrations with not knowing when a team member was planning on working on a certain task. This is especially important if one member's progress depends on another’s tasks getting completed.

5. Wellness Boosts- These will be linked with accomplishments. We heard from a number of people that similar features that send out reminders to take break are on an automatic system that interferes with their productivity. Instead of going out at random, our Wellness Boosts coincide with accomplishments. This will increase productivity, as you have something to work towards. This is also an important factor to help with feelings of being stressed and overwhelmed. Taking time for yourself is more important than ever before. Additionally, with this being an integral part of our product, our customers should feel as though they can use these Boosts since their company chose to use this service. This should decrease feelings of guilt when taking much deserved breaks.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of the concept we created, and the fact that we were able to put together a great prototype in such a short period of time. It was a new and unique challenge for all of us, and being able to complete this project remotely and within the time constraint is a huge accomplishment.

If you had another 5 weeks to work on this, what would you do next?

If we had an additional 5 weeks to work on this project, we would integrate our prototype into a functional website. We have designed the website, but at this point and with a lack of resources, we are unable to integrate them. We are really proud of our website and you can view it here! link At this time, our prototype is a phone app, and in the future, we would love to see it accessible on customers computers in addition to the mobile version. We would also conduct more user testing to make improvements once people can work with and become comfortable using our product. Another feature we would work more on would be rewards in addition to the Wellness Boosts. These rewards could be done via dropshipping and include gift cards and coupons. Overall, we would love to grow our product and gain more insight from user testing to make improvements.

Built With

• canva
• excelvba
• wix