An office space that was borne out during the pandemic to help remote workers connect and collaborate effectively.
Wonder started as a browser base platform that catered to remote workers, helping them bridge the connection while being able to still collaborate effectively without the effects of Zoom fatigue.
See also: Virtual Space Rebranding.
Project date: March 2022
Wonder started in 2020 as a video events platform with the goal of connecting users across the globe at low cost during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s main differentiator was to tackle the problem of “zoom-fatigue” by creating a lightweight, minimalistic and casual setting for users. However this still proved challenging to compete against early and more established products. In early 2022, Wonder decided to pivot the business toward Virtual Offices that targets smaller firms at a competitive price whilst revamping some of it’s core features to focus on remote workers and foster close collaboration.
The basic platform features needed to appeal enough to users that will justify a subscription fee.
Remote teams, in general, have less visibility into what each member is working on. This can create mistrust, anxiety and a lack of belonging to the team. On top of that, the use of multiple external tools makes collaboration fragmented; documents get scattered to different applications, or even worse stored locally on individual devices.
“Whenever knowledge needed to do a task is readily available in the world, the need for us to learn diminishes” - Don Norman The Design of Everyday things
Problem statement: Having multiple tools requires users to keep track of where documents are in order to reference or share them with collaborators. This makes access only as good as the user’s memory of where documents are stored.
Hypothesis: If all of a users tools are in one place accessible within Wonder we can increase productivity and improve team cohesiveness
Challenge: How do we bring everything together into a limited area without over-cluttering the space?
To replicate in-person discussions and collaborations in a remote setting and provide meaningful tools that help foster them was to take inspiration from actual live collaboration and discussion sessions. Below are photos from my previously conducted design thinking workshop where teams discuss and collaborate on tasks. I have highlighted the frequently used tools that teams used to make their collaboration work- such as sticky notes, drawing of diagrams, multiple screens of work files etc.
We started by interviewing users to get a sense of what tools they used daily.
Before we jumped into defining our collaboration artefact feature, we conducted several user interviews to understand which virtual spaces they have previously explored and their impression of them. Spatial chat was often named as our direct competitor and is also one of the more established virtual office platform. They too have a similar feature that aims to break down barriers to collaboration while improving transparency among team members. Below is a breakdown analysis and summary on where they succeed and where they are lacking based on our findings:
We hypothesised that there existed a collection of necessary tools (Collaboration Artefacts) that will foster asynchronous collaboration and increase spontaneous communication. The feature would collectively contain a degree of skeuomorphism to limit the learning curve. Well-known physical artefacts such as sticky notes and document files have well defined signifiers and affordances as to enable interaction with little instruction.
We also wanted to add comment threads that users could tag onto “topics” or “elements” in the space which provide much needed contextual breadcrumbs for new or returning users. To spruce up the experience, stickers were a simple and fun way to help keep communication "business casual".
To validate our hypothesis we picked a single artefact, sticky notes, to test the viability and demand for collaboration artefacts as a whole.
When user clicks on a card in the list view it highlights the sticky in the space
When sticky notes went live in production, 25% of users were using it in their space within the first week. We conducted interviews to learn how they use sticky notes to iterate and prep for the next iteration.
While sticky notes appeared popular, users complained that they were not discoverable enough and creating them was a hassle. Other issues mentioned were the size of the sticky notes.
To address the problem of discoverability, I decided to incorporate a floating toolbar to house all of the collaboration tools for easy access. This also makes it possible to create a sticky note with a single click.
The toolbar can be “stuck” anywhere in the space or minimized for maximum flexibility.
One-click to create sticky note. Colours during this launch is still limited.
User can click anywhere in the space to drop sticky. After it’s dropped, it enters “text-edit” mode.
With the new launch of the UI toolkit, discoverability of “sticky note” improved and there was an coinciding increase in feature uptake. Many users used them as meeting notes or public announcements for their fellow members. While our users loved this feature, they also made several requests such as being able to draw on sticky notes and adjusting the size of the sticky note to allow more flexibility in the space. Others requested features such as setting a timer that would clear a note after a predetermined time to improve spatial hygiene.
With the success of sticky notes, we had confirmed our hypothesis of the demand for on-hand collaboration tools as they help lower barriers for collaboration.
The challenge with collaborating remotely or in-person is the fact that teams often scramble to find files and documents. That takes up time that does not contribute towards effective collaboration. Another challenge is having to update team members who were unable to attend the day’s meeting thus missing out on a lot of context. That again is another time wasted on updating and having to help them get up to speed on the projects.
My hypothesis was that to help teams collaborate effectively synchronously or asynchronously is to have the right files on hand. These documents are readily placed in the space and can be opened up anytime by any member. They can be worked on together in real-time or asynchronously. This enables transparency and fosters spontaneous collaboration without the need for additional meetings.
During our research, we conducted observations on how teams collaborate together remotely. Our observations noted :
User can preview who’s working on which document by hovering their mouse over a file.
User can also preview on a file that is within a circle by mousing over.
In order to view the preview, user must be logged into the respective artefact domain.
When a user who isn’t logged in tries to open a document, a security prompt will appear.
Session/ Area/ Room is a mini-version of the space. User can still preview who’s working on which document by hovering their mouse over a file.
Problem with this: Confusing because, within a session, everyone is on a live video conference call at the same time.
The position of the 2nd (Folder) column stays fix to cater to potential scrolling.
Users can rearrange artefacts wherever and however they want.
Problem with this: Very messy and documents may not be as easy to find.
Session/ Area/ Room is a mini-version of the space. You can see who’s working on what in a form of a circle, but not the same as a conversation circle.
Problem with this: It gets rather confusing since, within a session, everyone is on a live video conference call at the same time
The fold is automatically created with a generated folder name and will minimize to a smaller node after the user has release the mouse hold.
When the user clicks on the group, the box expands full size
There were 3 school of thoughts during the design review that needed to be justified :
We conducted interviews by showing users concept screens to gauge their interest level. While we got positive feedback and initial interest, we realised many of our current users were using the space primarily for more casual interactions. We also concluded that users may not have or want to add too many files into the space due to a perceived lack of security. We eventually decided adopt the “free positioning” nodes as the MVP and test how users interact with it.
When user clicks on the overflow menu, user has to option to open, move, edit or delete from the side drawer as well.
Examining the analytics we discovered that demand for collaboration artefacts was not as high as for sticky notes. From follow up interviews we found that most people were apprehensive about linking files into the space because of security concerns. As part of the future scope we planned to provide in-app tutorials about how security was handled and to provide more granular access controls when adding content.
