Spinsight: Fostering Millennial’s Social Vitality At Work

Abstract

Worldwide, the concept of vitality has been trending and it stands for a positive status of human aliveness and energy correlated with physical and psychological well-being (Ryan & Frederick, 1997). However, vitality in the context of work does not attract much attention and the majority of existing workplace products are productivity-driven for employers’ benefit; this project and its partner OfficeVitae, aim to develop a Vitality Platform to fill in this gap.The project focuses on the millennial employees’ vitality at work as they are becoming the dominant workforce in the near future (Haworth, 2015). Through a series of literature and qualitative user-centric research (contextmapping), a holistic vitality model was formulated including intrapersonal, organizational, contextual and somatic factors. Millennial employees’ vitality at work is fluid and significantly affected by the intrapersonal (e.g. challenge, social interaction, flexibility) and organizational factors (e.g. work-life balance). Work-life balance (harmony) was further identified as the ultimate goal on account of the long-term influence and salient impact on millennial employees. They are seeking the harmony in the fulfillment of work and life achievement (work-life harmony). Then, three vitality directions were formulated accordingly: Pressure Tracker, Macro Management and Life Enrichment. The research phase was concluded with the selected vitality direction “Life Enrichment through drawing new inspirations from colleagues” on account of its positive approach (Social interaction) and the promotion of user agency and mindful person-product interaction (Active participation), which are successful long-term implementing criteria identified from digital health and existing workplace products.In the design phase, four concepts were tested in a Dutch startup company (PHYSEE). The results were accessed by the predefined vitality criteria (e.g. flexibility, social interaction, challenge, relaxation and growth), person-product interaction (Active participation) and the simplicity (Fog, 2009). In addition, the curiosity about colleagues was discovered as a strong intrinsic motivator during the test. Thus, Colleague Observation, answering a non-work-related random question about colleague, was selected for further refinement. Optimized person-product interactions and sustainable motivators (feedback) were explored through iterative research through design. At the end, The Spin Wheel was chosen for optimized interaction and better leveraging motivators (e.g. different difficulty levels of questions). Next, the design goal was reframed -- “A digital platform encouraging millennial employees to explore non-work-related aspects of colleagues with the aim of taking a mental switch from work.”; the interaction should be engaging, curious and relaxed like finding “Where is Waldo?”. The final concept “SpInsight” has three main functions: requesting and answering a random question, proposing a customized question and checking personal record. All the default questions are divided into six categories with different difficulty levels: appearance, belongings, character, experience and customized questions (time-bounded/ non-time-bounded). An interactive prototype was evaluated in four companies. The concept worked in the group of TOPdesk interns and it potentially triggered more face-to-face non-work-related interaction with colleagues, which in turn enhances vitality at work. However, employee participants showed less motivation because of less motivating questions, lack of feedback and trigger. Thus, two focus groups were conducted to clarify the critical long-term motivators. The curiosity about how colleagues perceive oneself was the most powerful spark (Fog, 2009) to enhance the retention (e.g. push notification like “You are mentioned in an answer.”). In general, SpInsight is feasible in a workplace and considered fun and engaging. There are some opportunities could also benefit from its advantage of getting to know people quickly, such as an introduction program in the educational setting. However, how to attract group participation and sustain millennial employees’ interest and motivations over time requires further research and evaluation on different working context (e.g. company scale, department, the stage of group development).