xSiemens-IdeaSharingTool

Designing a user-friendly process that inspires and motivates Siemens employees to share innovative ideas

Client: Siemens
Duration: 2 weeks
Focus: User and market research, wireframes, prototyping

0. Background

The Problem + How I was involved

Currently, the Siemens Mobility department has an idea sharing tool where employees can share ideas. However, only one in ten employees are using this tool, and it does not allow employees to keep up with the status of their idea.

The client wanted a more effective digital product that allows employees to share ideas and track their status, and for managers to read, evaluate, select and notify the employees about the status of their ideas.

This was a two weeks project. I worked with three other UX/UI designers, and communicated with the client frequently.

1. Empathize

Getting to know the problem

We kicked off the project conducting competitive and business analyses to collect as much information possible about idea sharing tools and companies that implemented those tools in the current market.

Simultaneously, we communicated with clients to learn more about their current tool. We wanted to know more about:

What the client values in one idea?
What the most important piece of information is in an idea?
What is the MVP?
What are current usability problems?
What is the reputation of the current tool?
What is the overall flow and look of the tool?

Based on background research and initial talks with the client, we created an interview guideline for employees and managers. There was a need to understand the current situation from both perspectives in order to understand the problem. Here are some of the questions we prepared:

Questions to Employees:

What do you expect from sharing your ideas?
How do you decide whether or not to share an idea?
What motivates you to share an idea?
Do you recall a time when you participated in coming up with and sharing innovative ideas?
Can you walk us through how you use the current idea sharing tool?
How do you feel about colleagues, other than management, viewing your ideas?

Questions to Managers:

How do you currently give feedback to employees?
What are some things that frustrates you when giving feedback?
Currently, how are you motivating and engaging employees to submit ideas?
Currently, when faced with many ideas, what is your criteria for selecting the best ideas?
Do you think it is important for employees to be involved in the idea selection process?

We conducted a total of seven interviews. Two on-site at the Siemens office in Berlin, and five others on telephone with three being Siemens employees.

2. Define

Evaluating our findings

Our team placed all our insights on a wall, and sorted each insight into groups so we could physically see trends and relationships in our data. We then created a header for each group that captured the essential link among the ideas.

Here are the key insights we gained:

Currently, submitting ideas is tedious because it is extra clicks away
Employees talk with other colleagues during their coffee/lunch breaks, and feel that it is a great time and place to discuss ideas
Current feedback loop is too long. It discourages them from submitting ideas
When asked if they have used the current tool, not many employees had experience using the current tool
Current tool does not allow employees to keep notified with the status of their submission
Biggest motivator to share idea is that their input is valued
Speed and quality of their feedback make employees feel that their idea is valued. Consequently motivates them to submit ideas

We filled an empathy map to synthesize rationale and sentimental aspects of employees and managers. The perspectives and behaviors helped us better understand the problem and make decisions throughout our process.

We then created HMW statements referencing back on our affinity diagram. After dot voting, the HMW statement we decided on was:

How might we integrate sharing ideas into the daily work life of the Siemens employees?

3. Ideate

Getting creative

We began ideating using the crazy eight method. After sharing our ideas amongst ourselves, we polished one idea that we felt had the biggest potential, and shared the one idea again.
We all had a similar idea in mind, and decided to integrate the best parts of our ideas to generate a powerful idea.

Our idea was an interactive digital wall where employees can see and share innovative ideas, that will then guide them to a seamless idea submission process on their desktop.

We then created a site map to list out necessary content for our interactive wall and idea submission tool. To get a better idea of how users will interact with the product, we created user flows, which helped detect potential pain points and also validate our user journey.

4. Prototype

Bringing the idea to life

We created low-fidelity wireframes, and created interactive mid-fidelity prototypes in order to test with current employees to conduct usability tests.

We tested on two Siemens employees and three non-employees.

We received valuable feedback.

Interactive Wall Feedback:

Function of wall was not clear
Content was hard to understand what it was about
Having name of manager on cards could negatively affect employees' submission due to bias or fear of judgement

Submission Tool Feedback:

Feedback should be more prominent
Would be nice to see more clearly when idea will be reviewed, and upcoming steps
What counts as "resources"?

After iterating our prototypes, we tested again.

Once we were confident with our mid-fidelity prototype, we designed our high-fidelity prototype. To keep the look and feel of our product consistent with the Siemens brand, we used their brand guideline as reference and designed the style tile accordingly.

5. Final Thoughts + Next Steps

Takeaways

We were able to present our product to the client and received positive feedback.

Additionally, our project was selected as a finalist for the Hackshow, and our team had the opportunity to present our ideas in front of the public and a panel of judges

Read about this project in full detail here