- November 20, 2018
Brief
This project is intended to design a product, service or system that improves health and well-being by encouraging and/or enabling better sleep. Background – Almost half of adults in the UK suffer from poor sleep, with stress, money worries and mobile devices often blamed…
Millennials
Millennials sleep more hours; one study by ‘the American Bureau of Labor Statistics’ discovered that Millennials are sleeping an average of 25 minutes longer each night (with the average sleeping 6.8 hours per night). It propels Millennials straight into the recommended “7 to 9 hours (sleep)” category.
Secondary Research
But they are also reporting higher levels of stress, casting some doubt on the true quality of the sleep they are getting.
*Factor 01 – Conflict with older generations at work; as Millennials are becoming mainstream labor force, ‘performance review’ is on the horizon as one of the greatest touch points where the both parties can conflict against each other. It reveals reasons why Millennials are so stressed out at work.
Empathy Interviews
To develop empathy with them about the stress, I have interviewed a couple of Millennials at my age, currently working at a startup and big organizations (1 hour in duration per person).
*Factor 02 – Millennials are not motivated the way older generations were; Motivating factors at work can be fairly diverging by individuals, but one of the most common values they share was personal development; whether employers embrace flexibility and freedom to leverage that at work.
Empathy Map
Completing the interviews, I have mapped out one of the interviewee’s emotional factors behind her worries and stress about annual performance reviews in order to create initial personas.
Opportunities
1) Promoting post-work day routine and activities, 2) constant feedback, 3) transparency, and 4) diversifying evaluation channels have been chosen as primary opportunity areas in relation to performance reviews. The goal has been set to design a system (i.e. service, digital product, etc) that embraces at least one of these expectations.
Journey Mapping 01
Focusing on the first topic: “promoting post-work day routine and activities”, I started mapping out the journey (As-Is) to see if there are touch points to be designed and improved.
Journey Mapping 02
Below is the journey map of a performance review at a software/IT firm based in London. Unnecessary multiple communication channels and the linear process can be improved in the way that the evaluation process can capture external factors that motivate productivity and performance.
Touch Point #1 Mobile App
“Diversifying evaluation channels by promoting post-work day routine & activities”
- Encouraging post-work day activities, e.g. networking, socializing, etc leads to confident, healthy mindset at work, helping employees perform better with less stress. The activities can be tailored for each individual by personal interests, so it won’t be pushy at all!
- Through constant feedback with gamification factors on mobile application (badge, progress bar, push notification, etc), employees are able to track their records with transparency.
Evaluation process can be daunting for Millennials, causing a lot of stress. – Diversify the evaluation channels to embrace them. – Socialize, get involved to release stress and worries to sleep better.
*The project is still ongoing.