UI/UX Designer
Work Safe
App Created to Tackle Racial Discrimination in the Workplace
UI/UX Design
Prototyping
Social Impact
People who experience racial discrimination at work live with constant anxiety and are forced to behave cautiously in an environment where they are meant to be pursuing their passion. Once an incident begins, it tends to escalate and many are often unclear when the line has been crossed. Employees today still face racial discrimination in many forms creating a hostile working environment.
ROLE
UI/UX Designer
Researcher
SKILLS
Figma, Wireframing, Adobe Suite, User Interview, Research,
Prototyping
TEAM
Designers: Sophie Chen &
Nicole Kim
TIME SPAN
Oct 2020-Dec 2020
Mission Statement
We seek to create an app that would allow for quick documentation of every incident that happens. Employees can then choose to create a comprehensive report that would make for a stronger case against their perpetrator. WorkSafe is there to help employees feel safer at work by providing them a tool where they can record evidence of discriminatory situations to create a comprehensive report to have if they choose to pursue action. We guide our users to resources, counselors, and organizations that deal specifically with racial discrimination.
Research Phase
Initial Research
My partner (Nicole Kim) and I started with initial research to learn more about what was already provided in the world. We conducted research on diversity training within companies to learn more about its function.
1. What is Diversity Training at the workplace?
Purpose of Diversity Training
Trump’s Executive Order On Diversity Traning
2. What are the Antidiscrimination Laws in the Workplace?
EEO-Equal Employment Opportunity
3. What are the consequences if discrimination is made?
Legal Consequences
Reduced Productivity
Research Phase 2
In the second phase of research, we focused on the reporting process and the support that companies provide. Through our research, we found out that it was crucial to keep detailed records of each incident that happened in order to conduct an investigation.
1. What is needed in the reporting process?
Detailed records of incidents = tool for investigation
Quality evidence that allows entries of misconduct
Accurate records that help with a memory error
2. How can we support?
Easing the fear of reporting
Importance of human interaction and interpretation
Social conversation that guides actions
Research Phase 3
We then looked into how one-to-one counseling can support employees when faced with discrimination at their workplace. Overall, Counseling provides emotional support to employees, so they feel cared for while facing these difficult situations.
Meet our users
User Interview
Interviews were crucial to our project. As stated before this issue is complex, everyone’s experiences are different. We needed to gather diverse perspectives in order to understand the underlying issues we needed to solve. So we gathered 4 people of different ethnicities, occupations, and gender to learn about their experiences with racial discrimination in the workplace.
Questions
Insights
We were able to identify the major pain points and insights from our interview and research. The 4 major insights include the following:
1. Most racial discrimination situation that happens at the workplace is in the form of indirect discrimination and microaggressions.
2.When faced with discrimination, most Interviewees knew to go to HR; however, they were NOT informed about a reporting system within the workplace.
3.Interviewees hesitated to speak out or report because they were unsure of the discrimination at the moment.
4. Interviewees would NOT talk about the misconducts within their workplace in fear of retaliation from their employers.
Target User
Taking from the insights we gathered from our interviews we created Sarah M. our target user.
Problem Statement
Employees today still face racism in the workplace in the form of indirect discrimination. This includes snide remarks, daily inappropriate behaviors, and racial stereotypes.
At work, Sarah has experienced uncomfortable comments and unfair treatment from both her coworkers and manager, and she is unsure how to deal with these situations.
How might we support Sarah in a work environment where she feels comfortable speaking out against discrimination?
Ideate and Sketch
Concept Sketches
With a clear problem identified, we dived straight into ideation. We wanted to develop an application that was easily accessible to working individuals. Taking information from our research and insights, we wanted to include these two concepts.
Helps employees keep records of incidents that happen & generate a comprehensive report
Counseling and resource function where employees can find professional one-to-one counseling, open group chat for group support, and other resources.
Narrowing Down a Solution
Through this process, we narrowed down the ideas to focus on the must-haves that are supported by our research and insights.
1. Tracking and Reporting
a. Record incidents
b. Important documentation
c. Generating a comprehensive report
i. If users choose to pursue action
d. Providing resources for report
Why?
= tool for investigation
Immediate record-keeping that helps with memory error
Quality evidence that allows entries of misconduct
Guidance for reporting system
2. Counselor and Resource
a. Professional one to one counseling
d. Resources
i. Organizations to contact for further resources and reporting
Why?
Importance of human interaction and interpretation
Easing the fear of reporting
Anonymous record-keeping and counseling that is external
A social conversation that guides actions
First Prototype
With that in mind, we created a low fidelity paper prototype to test out our ideas on users.
User Flow
User Test 1
Taking our paper prototype we began our first round of user testing with 5 users.
Results
We found that overall the layout of the app was easy to understand and navigate through. However many users found the organizing folders feature to be hard to follow and it was difficult for them to clearly identify when the app had begun generating a report.
Edits
Results
1. Adding the drag and drop function for an organization.
2. We also added the 3 dots more icons for clarity to where to find the edit and delete icons.
3. The view inside the folder was redesigned for clarity as well.
4. We added a select all button for a faster route to choose all incidents at once.
5. We labeled the bottom icons for clarity since some of the icons were not universal.
User Test 2
After edits, we went into the second round of user testing.
Results
In this round, we discovered more specific feature issues such as the report overview being unclear, or the navigation icons on top not making much sense.
Style Guide
Before taking our edits into a high-fidelity prototype we quickly laid out a style guide to help keep our visual design cohesive.
Final Interactive Prototype
Then with our style guide, we prototyped a hi-fidelity mockup.
User Flow
Edits
Here is a detailed look int the edits we made from our first prototype to our hi-fidelity prototype.
Details
We prioritized the 3 graphs that we decided were the most important. The followings are
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The line graph of the # of incidents within a timeframe
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The bar graph of # of incidents at a time of the day
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The pie graph of who was involved the most
We also differentiated the folders and incidents visually, so they are easily identified from each other.
Lastly, we added the pop-up slide in-between the generate report button and selection of reports to divide the sections and give users options to start generating the overview report.
End Product
Our app will allow victims of racial discrimination to upload information and evidence of what they experienced at work whenever they feel it is necessary. Organizing each incident helps our users keep track of everything they experienced. The action does not need to be immediate but once a user is ready they can generate a concise report of all evidence they need to create a strong case against their perpetrator. The employee will have a documented history of their experience which we can then guide them to organizations and counselors there specifically to help support users with the next steps.
Reflection
To be continued...
As stated before racial discrimination is a complex and nuanced issue that has no simple solution. Our product is only one small part of a larger fight for workplace equality. Even within just recording and reporting an incident there are many opportunities for us to further explore.
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How can we have our app be more directly connected to the company?
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How can the app record and report for someone who has witnessed racial discrimination?
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How can the app include a reporting system that is more than just a bridge to help you report?
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More research on resources related to workplace discrimination
Read more about WorkSafe here!
