An office card game that explores slow design, and the connection between vulnerability and trust in building healthier work environments.
Vancouver Coastal Health strives to deliver a caring experience for its community. They want to make trust and relationality their guiding principle not only in their interactions with the users but also within their work culture. As a designer, how do we create design solutions that help build the foundation for long-term trust within team members so they can connect people, action, and policy through a human lens. Trust Kit is a tool for building trust in teams by facilitating meaningful conversations in an office environment.
Project Type: Student Project
Project Duration: 12 weeks
My Role: Lead designer in a team of 3
How to tackle “Trust” when it’s so big
Research
With such a big problem space it was hard to find a starting point, I gathered as much information as I could about trust and found there is much research on the relationship between trust and productivity.
Trusting employees are 260% more motivated to work, and have 41% lower rates of absenteeism. When trust is present, teams are more liekly to share ideas and speak up about what’s truly on their mind
There are two types of trust:
Practical trust can be earned by being a steadfast worker; you meet commitments, show up on time, and do what you say you’ll do. People rely on your competence and dependability. They trust you to get the job done.
Emotional trust is the next level, and it takes teamwork in the workplace to the next level as well. It’s when people trust that you’re on their side. They know you’ll treat them kindly and respectfully, that you won’t judge them for their setbacks, and they’re comfortable telling you their honest thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
Emotional trust is common and can be found in areas outside of work environments and a lot of it is built upon vulnerability, transparency, and understanding.
Finding patterns and connecting the dots
I called my team to the drawing board to start jogging everything down so we could start connecting the dots. At this stage of the project, we have few structures and lots of ideas, mind mapping techniques such as ecosystem maps helped us see the different possibilities of tackling the problem.
We broke things down and found these are the most common reasons in the workspace:
lack of connection:
bad design of the workspace such as a singular work desk constrains connections between people, if we design the office space in a way that welcomes collaboration and supports focus, maybe people will feel more connected.
lack of interaction:
a lot of interactions are work-related, if we build a single topic that people can all relate to maybe they will feel more willing to partake in group activities.
the difference in culture and experiences:
an office environment consists of people who grow up in very different background and lives very different life outside of work. If we can help people spark up a conversation, maybe it will foster understanding and empathy.
With bite-size problems we found feasible solutions
One thing I was clear about was that I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and design an app or website, as UX designers we were trained to think how the internet can be the solution to everything, but I think design solutions are not always limited to something digital, but rather what is best for the scenario. The touch point we found in previous research suggests that trust lies in interactions, and sharing vulnerabilities and I want to take the approach of building something tangible. We decided to focus on the emotional aspect of building trust and create a deck of cards that builds trust by helping people connect through deeper conversation.
On top of the cards we also want to bring the idea of life into the work environment. We introduced a small hawthorn plant, where everyone should take turns taking care of it, hope it will promote common connections between coworkers and create more interactions outside of work topics. And to remind people that nurturing trust is like nurturing a life, it requires real effort.
Prototyping a tangible product
Quality conversation that leads to close teamwork
We cut up some rectangular pieces of paper to resemble cards. We came across a paper published about 52 questions that lead to love, and we found similarities in ways that both require a certain level of trust. But for this office card game, we focused more on getting to know each other’s career goals, inspirations, and passions. Building trust is a gradual process, so should the question be. We made sure to keep it fun and light, but most importantly the answers should reveal an important part of a person’s morals and values.
What is the best thing that happened to you today?
How did you get here and how was the process?
First-level:
Basic things about a person, we will feel comfortable sharing the answers to a friend we just met.
Second-level:
More detail and are focused on different aspects of someone’s personal life.
Where do you want to go for your next trip? When are you planning to go there?
If you can have anything animal as a pet, what woud you choose?
Third-level:
Reveal vulnerabilities, the answers help us understand their deeper motivations.
Who was your biggest childhood hero and why?
What do you value the most in one person in the work environment?
Give meaning to day-to-day meetings
“Gatherings crackle and flourish when real thought goes into them, when (often invisible) structure is baked into them, and when a host has the curiosity, willingness, and generosity of spirit to try.”
—— Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
In the book The Art of Gathering, it talks about how a good host can lead to a successful workshop. In honoring the idea of this book, I think there is a deeper meaning in why we meet and each gathering is an opportunity for people to get to know each other. If people can start being more thoughtful in each meeting, it could turn into something more. I want everyone to be able to be a good host when holding the set of cards, by being the leader of a meaningful conversation.
At first, I wrote the instructions in more detail, but through user testing, I found that we need the instructions to be very straight to the point, because no one has time to read a whole essay before the meeting. I organized the text with an information hierarchy, which included a short description of the purpose. Thinking about the different scenarios of who this is designed for, I added desired instructions for different meeting sizes.
The Kit coming to life
The branding design of the card also went through different stages. We wanted to use the symbol of a lotus flower which represents harmony and peace, later on, we thought that metamorphosis was a better representation as it means growth and transformation. By using color psychology, we narrowed down the color scheme to pink, blue, or green. We ended up choosing green to fit the nurturing motif.
To make the project come to life I formatted the front and back of the card for print, though the first couple of tries were disasters, I ended up finding a good paper material that is cost-efficient and sturdy, to make them feel better when handling, I trimmed the corners round. The kit is coming to live with higher fidelity prototypes, and we were excited to see the Vancouver Coastal health team’s reaction.
A gap in research we found through user testings
How to make trust measurable
Before we arrived at their Vancouver Office with our refined prototype, I sent our person in contact a brief agenda and the goal for our user testing, and I prepared a short survey form to ensure the feedback remained anonymous. It is a shorter meeting with 5 people and they have worked with each other for a long time. These people heard briefly about the project, but they knew nothing in detail.
We got some positive feedback, some of which included people saying that they did feel like they got to know something they didn’t know before, and so felt more connected with other people in the group. We also hear people say that they are confused about the plant. But one question strikes our attention: How do we know if it worked?
That’s when I realized we missed this major part of the discovery process. With only a couple weeks left until the final handover, I called my team back to the drawing board and we started all over again with a couple of brainstorming exercises before coming together with some ideas.
I took inspiration from the raffle machine and I loved that it involves an action that requires everyone’s participation. The different colors are a great visual representation of collective contribution. Expect I simplified the process and made it so that we are not actually “drawing a prize”. The three colored marbles represent three levels of trust, every month or week team members will put in a marple that represents how much they trust other people. The trust level will be represented by the average color of the marbles.
Refinement
I decided to schedule another user testing session with the Vancouver Coastal Health team for the use of a trust measurer, but this time I requested that we shadow one of the large team meetings and present to use the card game with a larger group. This is a newer team of 10 people, and we got some positive feedback from people’s reactions, however, they were debating if we should make the trust measure transparent. The deliverables consist of a set of playing cards, a plant, and a trust measurer. For the final handover, I re-printed the cards with improvements in their quality, we changed the trust measurer to the non-transparent container, and we wrote our names on the plant because we all took time taking care of it. I also designed an instruction pamphlet for the game for a more detailed description of the meaning of each element.
Final Design
Use scenario
Instruction pamphlet
Takeaways
It was challenging because we were working with such a broad topic, but by narrowing a big concept down into smaller problems I was able to tackle a big problem space into smaller problems. With the amount of time we had this is still very much a prototype. But I see the potential of it becoming a very useful tool for building team trust, and to be used in real-life scenarios. Even though it is not an app design project, I am very glad I didn’t define the solution with my understanding, but I made choices based on research and user feedback which led this project to an unexpected place. It deepened my understanding of user-centric design and sharpened my problem-solving skills.
Something it taught me which inspired my user interviews is how to ask the right question. Sometimes simply rephrasing a question can get different results, and it can teach you different things about a person. For example, asking the question “What is your favorite animal” might teach you less about a person than if you ask “If you can choose any creature as a pet, what would you choose and why? These two questions are similar, but the latter is more open-ended ended, hence has the opportunity to stimulate thoughts, which reveals a big part of their personalities.
Slow design helps us restore a part of our needs to connect and to get to know the important people in our lives. In today's fast-paced office environment, people are always trying to go somewhere, and they want to get there fast. I remember even during the making of the projects and in some of the co-creation workshops and interviews I facilitated, I would rush into getting things done, but It reminds us to slow down. If we can take a little bit of time for gratitude, for care and to recognize that true teamwork doesn’t begin until people start understanding each other. As so is life itself and making friends with people we encounter. Sometimes it’s worth taking some time to ask the important questions.
Designed by Katherine Zhang, Andy Gao, and Yujia Zhai. A collaboration between INTD310 Interaction Design Studio, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and the City of Vancouver’s Healthy City Collaborative Leadership Solutions Lab.