SMcN UX

portfolio

Case study

Breakbites

building a work/life balance rewards system for employee wellness

Overview

Breakbites is a workplace solution I created together with a small team of fellow UX graduate students, where employers set up a system that rewards their employees for taking allocated breaks and earning points. Employees can redeem points for rewards, such as company swag, PTO, gift cards, and more. They are also training themselves to develop a better work/life balance by participating. In return, employers gain extensive data on their employees work/life balance with trackable metrics, and can utilize that data to determine if they are influencing employee productivity and happiness.

 

Why should a company spend money to set up a system like this just so their employees can take breaks? Because the ultimate ROI is far greater – retention rate, employee loyalty, morale, and productivity.

Project details

Timeline

8 weeks beginning from planning to high fidelity designs

Roles

UX design, UX research

Format

Desktop application, browser-based

Tools

Figma, Miro, Canva

Research - revealing the opportunity

Our research showed a mismatch in workforce satisfaction with their work-life balance and mental health, despite heavy investment from employers in well-being programs.

 

High Business Investment Yet Low Staff Buy-in on existing wellness initiatives:

  • "46% of organizations increased their 2020 well- being budgets relative to 2019, while 64% of organizations introduced a new well-being offering in 2020."
  • "87% of employees have access to mental and emotional well-being offerings, only 23% of employees use them."

 

4 out of 5 workers find it hard to “shut off” in the evenings and feel disconnected from their coworkers:

  • Over half of respondents have taken a “mental health day” since they started working from home, due to the pandemic
  • 97% say that vacation days while working from home are important for “recharging” – another way of saying “mental health”
  • ~50% of respondents cite that their sleep patterns have been interrupted due to COVID-19, and 45% say they feel less healthy mentally while working from home

Problem statement

How might companies create a positive work environment that encourages, supports, and trains their employees to build a good work-life balance?

Mapping a company-guided solution - how does it work?

Our team mapped out the benefits for both employers and employees in key outcomes for both parties.

Working with personas developed from user interviews

We interviewed 12 people and determined some key sentiments as they described their day-to-day experience of their work life balance, their schedules, and their social needs. We found that many people either developed highly structured routines and schedules, or their days blended into one big blur. Defining these personas helped us identify and respond to user needs for many different use cases.

Mapping the core pages for the app.

Low fidelity screens for core pages

Wireframes developed to start visualizing how activities might be added or relevant challenges/groups might be displayed if a user is interested in a particular activity, offering additional ways to engage and share activities with coworkers.

To allow for quick break logging without opening the app, I created a flow for a desktop widget.

Moving to high fidelity

When it was time to create a high fidelity prototype we added a bit of branding and renamed our app “BreakBites” to make it clear it’s focused on taking breaks and is intended to be a quick, repeatable process.

Users sync their calendars so the app can consolidate them and determine when breaks might fit in.

Challenges can get users signed up and motivated to continue participation.

The home page offers a quick view of the most important information - upcoming schedule, challenges, and stats are displayed prominently.

Scrolling down the home page, a social media-like feed shares fellow employees accomplishments.

Users can schedule breaks at any time, they don’t have to be part of a challenge. Allowing this freedom still rewards users and gives the company data on work-life balance.

The group page allows users to find like-minded coworkers and connect with them during breaks.

The rewards page is based on a simple ecommerce

User testing

We developed a round of user testing questions to gather feedback, validate our assumptions and inform our next steps. We found that people were interested in being rewarded for improving their work-life balance, but were not sure if their schedules would allow the extra time to do more involved activities.

Next steps

  • Research, build, & test business side of BreakBites application
  • Interview stakeholders and potential partners to get their input on the proposed solution.
  • Determine feasible feature expansions based on different business models/corporate structures.
  • Further rounds of user testing/prototyping/iteration of the employee-facing application.
  • Develop and test value system for rewards redemption.
  • Allow third party investors to explore implementing their own branding of the solution.

Explore the prototype for yourself!

Connect with me on LinkedIn

SMcN UX

portfolio

Case study

Breakbites

building a work/life balance rewards system for employee wellness

Overview

Breakbites is a workplace solution I created together with a small team of fellow UX graduate students, where employers set up a system that rewards their employees for taking allocated breaks and earning points. Employees can redeem points for rewards, such as company swag, PTO, gift cards, and more. They are also training themselves to develop a better work/life balance by participating. In return, employers gain extensive data on their employees work/life balance with trackable metrics, and can utilize that data to determine if they are influencing employee productivity and happiness.

 

Why should a company spend money to set up a system like this just so their employees can take breaks? Because the ultimate ROI is far greater – retention rate, employee loyalty, morale, and productivity.

Project details

Timeline

8 weeks beginning from planning to high fidelity designs

Roles

UX design, UX research

Format

Desktop application, browser-based

Tools

Figma, Miro, Canva

Research - revealing the opportunity

Our research showed a mismatch in workforce satisfaction with their work-life balance and mental health, despite heavy investment from employers in well-being programs.

 

High Business Investment Yet Low Staff Buy-in on existing wellness initiatives:

  • "46% of organizations increased their 2020 well- being budgets relative to 2019, while 64% of organizations introduced a new well-being offering in 2020."
  • "87% of employees have access to mental and emotional well-being offerings, only 23% of employees use them."

 

4 out of 5 workers find it hard to “shut off” in the evenings and feel disconnected from their coworkers:

  • Over half of respondents have taken a “mental health day” since they started working from home, due to the pandemic
  • 97% say that vacation days while working from home are important for “recharging” – another way of saying “mental health”
  • ~50% of respondents cite that their sleep patterns have been interrupted due to COVID-19, and 45% say they feel less healthy mentally while working from home

Problem statement

How might companies create a positive work environment that encourages, supports, and trains their employees to build a good work-life balance?

Mapping a company-guided solution - how does it work?

Our team mapped out the benefits for both employers and employees in key outcomes for both parties.

Working with personas developed from user interviews

We interviewed 12 people and determined some key sentiments as they described their day-to-day experience of their work life balance, their schedules, and their social needs. We found that many people either developed highly structured routines and schedules, or their days blended into one big blur. Defining these personas helped us identify and respond to user needs for many different use cases.

Mapping the core pages for the app.

Low fidelity screens for core pages

Wireframes developed to start visualizing how activities might be added or relevant challenges/groups might be displayed if a user is interested in a particular activity, offering additional ways to engage and share activities with coworkers.

To allow for quick break logging without opening the app, I created a flow for a desktop widget.

Moving to high fidelity

When it was time to create a high fidelity prototype we added a bit of branding and renamed our app “BreakBites” to make it clear it’s focused on taking breaks and is intended to be a quick, repeatable process.

Users sync their calendars so the app can consolidate them and determine when breaks might fit in.

Challenges can get users signed up and motivated to continue participation.

The home page offers a quick view of the most important information - upcoming schedule, challenges, and stats are displayed prominently.

Scrolling down the home page, a social media-like feed shares fellow employees accomplishments.

Users can schedule breaks at any time, they don’t have to be part of a challenge. Allowing this freedom still rewards users and gives the company data on work-life balance.

The group page allows users to find like-minded coworkers and connect with them during breaks.

The rewards page is based on a simple ecommerce

User testing

We developed a round of user testing questions to gather feedback, validate our assumptions and inform our next steps. We found that people were interested in being rewarded for improving their work-life balance, but were not sure if their schedules would allow the extra time to do more involved activities.

Next steps

  • Research, build, & test business side of BreakBites application
  • Interview stakeholders and potential partners to get their input on the proposed solution.
  • Determine feasible feature expansions based on different business models/corporate structures.
  • Further rounds of user testing/prototyping/iteration of the employee-facing application.
  • Develop and test value system for rewards redemption.
  • Allow third party investors to explore implementing their own branding of the solution.

Explore the prototype for yourself!

Connect with me on LinkedIn

SMcN UX

portfolio

Case study

Breakbites

building a work/life balance rewards system for employee wellness

Overview

Breakbites is a workplace solution I created together with a small team of fellow UX graduate students, where employers set up a system that rewards their employees for taking allocated breaks and earning points. Employees can redeem points for rewards, such as company swag, PTO, gift cards, and more. They are also training themselves to develop a better work/life balance by participating. In return, employers gain extensive data on their employees work/life balance with trackable metrics, and can utilize that data to determine if they are influencing employee productivity and happiness.

 

Why should a company spend money to set up a system like this just so their employees can take breaks? Because the ultimate ROI is far greater – retention rate, employee loyalty, morale, and productivity.

Project details

Timeline

8 weeks beginning from planning to high fidelity designs

Roles

UX design, UX research

Format

Desktop application, browser-based

Tools

Figma, Miro, Canva

Research - revealing the opportunity

Our research showed a mismatch in workforce satisfaction with their work-life balance and mental health, despite heavy investment from employers in well-being programs.

 

High Business Investment Yet Low Staff Buy-in on existing wellness initiatives:

  • "46% of organizations increased their 2020 well- being budgets relative to 2019, while 64% of organizations introduced a new well-being offering in 2020."
  • "87% of employees have access to mental and emotional well-being offerings, only 23% of employees use them."

 

4 out of 5 workers find it hard to “shut off” in the evenings and feel disconnected from their coworkers:

  • Over half of respondents have taken a “mental health day” since they started working from home, due to the pandemic
  • 97% say that vacation days while working from home are important for “recharging” – another way of saying “mental health”
  • ~50% of respondents cite that their sleep patterns have been interrupted due to COVID-19, and 45% say they feel less healthy mentally while working from home

Problem statement

How might companies create a positive work environment that encourages, supports, and trains their employees to build a good work-life balance?

Mapping a company-guided solution - how does it work?

Our team mapped out the benefits for both employers and employees in key outcomes for both parties.

Working with personas developed from user interviews

We interviewed 12 people and determined some key sentiments as they described their day-to-day experience of their work life balance, their schedules, and their social needs. We found that many people either developed highly structured routines and schedules, or their days blended into one big blur. Defining these personas helped us identify and respond to user needs for many different use cases.

Mapping the core pages for the app.

Low fidelity screens for core pages

Wireframes developed to start visualizing how activities might be added or relevant challenges/groups might be displayed if a user is interested in a particular activity, offering additional ways to engage and share activities with coworkers.

To allow for quick break logging without opening the app, I created a flow for a desktop widget.

Moving to high fidelity

When it was time to create a high fidelity prototype we added a bit of branding and renamed our app “BreakBites” to make it clear it’s focused on taking breaks and is intended to be a quick, repeatable process.

Users sync their calendars so the app can consolidate them and determine when breaks might fit in.

Challenges can get users signed up and motivated to continue participation.

The home page offers a quick view of the most important information - upcoming schedule, challenges, and stats are displayed prominently.

Scrolling down the home page, a social media-like feed shares fellow employees accomplishments.

Users can schedule breaks at any time, they don’t have to be part of a challenge. Allowing this freedom still rewards users and gives the company data on work-life balance.

The group page allows users to find like-minded coworkers and connect with them during breaks.

The rewards page is based on a simple e-commerce structure, where users can redeem their points for company swag or even PTO.

User testing

We developed a round of user testing questions to gather feedback, validate our assumptions and inform our next steps. We found that people were interested in being rewarded for improving their work-life balance, but were not sure if their schedules would allow the extra time to do more involved activities.

Next steps

  • Research, build, & test business side of BreakBites application
  • Interview stakeholders and potential partners to get their input on the proposed solution.
  • Determine feasible feature expansions based on different business models/corporate structures.
  • Further rounds of user testing/prototyping/iteration of the employee-facing application.
  • Develop and test value system for rewards redemption.
  • Allow third party investors to explore implementing their own branding of the solution.

Explore the prototype for yourself!

Connect with me on LinkedIn