Design Research
Associate Experience
Service Design
Project context
Our client came to us looking to use research to gain prove their value within their organization. As a new created team, responsible for being experts/advocating for the associate (employee) experience. The client was looking to make a splash by getting a deeper understanding of associate capacity. Meaning, how associates manage their workload throughout their day.
Challenge
Our client was new, had a reputation to make, and had backgrounds in various design fields. Simply said, our client would be heavily involved and would be easy to please.
Approach
To gain a deep understanding of the associate experience we assembled a team of Researchers and Designers to visit several key sites across North America. While on site, teams would conduct observations, audits, and interviews. After the research phase our team would prepare a research readout and craft journey maps for key associate roles.
The research
I lead a team of researchers and client stakeholders across locations in Mexico and Texas. Our goals were to observe how associates complete tasks, manage their capacity, and handle pre and post shit handoffs. Our methods of research included observations, interviews, and a 1-on-1 activity using cotton balls to allocate capacity for tasks today, and an ideal future.
The synthesis
After teams finished research across all locations, our teams and the client teams gathered at the client headquarters to separately synthesize our findings. Both teams would work towards creating “day in the life” style journey maps. However, our team started from a black slate, while the client had an initial notion to create a map showing that clients “ping ponged” throughout their day.
Our team also spent significant time mapping the associate experience and more specifically, mapping the concept of “capacity.”
This lead our team to creating several key frameworks to explain the layering factors and forces that influence associates.
Aha!
moment
Task debt! Our research showed that associates did not, in fact, ping pong between tasks. Instead, they maintained a smooth demeanor (like a duck paddling). Associates also did not complete tasks before starting a new one. Instead, we found associates were masters at multi-tasking and delegating throughout their their day. This lead us to introduce the concept of task debt, meaning associates would accrue the debt of a task, while working on others.
Breakthrough
Impact
Task debt fundamentally changed the way we (and our client) approached the associate experience. It also lead to another breakthrough concerning our POV in mapping the associate experience.
Another Aha!
moment
Building off the discovery of task debt, our research also pointed to order within the chaos. Associates would experience ebs and flows in their day, instead of completely random instances. This happens because of both guest needs and patterns of efficiency created by associates themselves. We identified 4 distinct task patterns and we used the analogy of weather patterns to introduce them.
Breakthrough
Impact
Our client did not buy this concept. Yet, we believed in our work. Our team ended up paying to bring associates who participated in our research to join a workshop and give us feedback on our frameworks and concepts. The client was shocked when every participant agreed with our concepts. This lead to another fundamental shift in how the client (and their entire org) thought about the associate experience.
Project impact
This project was a first for the client team. First time working with our studio, and first project for their newly created team.
The partnership and deliverables from this project not only proved the viability for the client team, but it also lead to additional tracks of work that totaled over $5M.
