Your work-from-home companion.
Hi there!
Every Remotobot ships from the factory.
Here's how this one was built, Sept – Dec 2022.With the shift in many companies towards remote work, keeping employees focused and productive while on the job is crucial. By understanding the needs of remote workers and the factors that play a role in remote work, we set out to design a product or service to boost productivity, so that everyone has the opportunity to do the best work that they can.
“How can we improve productivity for remote workers in their 20s who are living alone?”
To answer that question properly we needed a deep understanding of our target audience, so we combined three methods: diary studies, interviews and surveys.
Participants documented their activities, thoughts and feelings through the day in a digital diary. Reviewing the entries showed how our audience spends their time, what they complete daily, and where the common pain points sit.
Semi-structured interviews with remote workers in their 20s who live alone, including software engineers, covering their work routines, the tools they use to stay productive, and how they keep themselves motivated at home.
A wider sample gave us quantitative data on productivity habits: the tools and resources they use, their current productivity levels, and their preferences for communication and collaboration.
All three pointed at the same pain points: difficulty staying motivated, feeling isolated and disconnected, and difficulty managing distractions.
We gathered the qualitative data and analysed it for themes and patterns. An affinity diagram made the commonalities across the three methods visible.
Affinity diagram of the qualitative data gathered, clustered into themes such as how productivity is defined and what helps or hurts it.
From our user research, we identified four major findings.
People define productivity as how much progress they make within a set amount of time.
Having goals gives people a reason to be productive.
Enjoyment can indirectly increase productivity by improving mood.
Phones are a common distractor that prevents people from being optimally productive.
Using our findings we built three personas for our key user segments — a primary, a secondary and a negative persona — and focused on the primary persona, Harper, to narrow the scope of the project.
I need someone to hold me accountable when I am working from home.”
Harper · primary persona
We ran a brainstorming session to sketch design ideas for the problems Harper runs into during the workday: a need for accountability, minimising external distractions, and maintaining focus throughout the day.
Sketches from the brainstorm, with dot votes on the ideas worth taking further.
Without the traditional office environment and colleagues to keep them on track, remote workers can find it hard to stay motivated and accountable for their work.
Working from home, it is easy to be pulled away by household tasks, social media or other non-work activities.
Without the social cues and accountability of an office, motivation and focus are hard to hold all day.
We moved forward with the physical robot companion because it addresses all three problems at once, with the added benefit of making the whole work day more enjoyable.
The concept sketch: a screen face that shows how the day is going, and a screen body that switches between the daily agenda, the weekly outlook and a general tool screen.
We identified three key user flows for the robot companion.
Tools like Outlook and reminders connect to the robot, so it can help manage work schedules and deadlines, flag what is coming up, and lay out the day in a way that optimises productivity.
Voice commands make the robot easier and more natural to engage with — set a timer, schedule a meeting, or play music to help stay focused.
A Pomodoro timer reminds users when to take a break and when to focus, and encourages them to do some stretches.
We built a mid-fidelity prototype of the robot companion around those three flows.
Integration between phone app and robot. The same goals, reminders and to-do list in both places.
Voice interaction with the robot. Speaking to the robot to add a task, without touching the screen.
Reminders that alert the user to their agenda. The robot speaks up when break time is over.
We specified the physical design, the technology for integrating productivity tools, and the accountability system, so the build would meet the needs of remote workers.
The UI style guide and the annotated specs for the robot dashboard, Pomodoro timer, app homepage and tool integration.
We took the prototype to five participants and asked them to complete a set of tasks, to find the usability issues.
The findings gave us four recommendations to follow in the next iteration.
Maximise screen real estate and place the most important information upfront.
Give users options to customise — UI elements, and adding time and priority to items.
Make text and button sizes larger and easier to read.
Put a back button on every page and support redo / undo.
A short walkthrough of Remotobot and the prototype.
The final interface: the robot's screen body, and the phone app that keeps the same information in your pocket.
The robot dashboard and the phone app side by side — the same agenda, goals and to-do list in both.
Choosing which apps to connect, signing in to each, then working through goals, reminders and the to-do list from the dashboard.
The quick access bar, the agenda, ongoing goals, and a Pomodoro cycle running on the robot's screen body.
Badges for completing goals or to-do items.
Let users link up with friends or coworkers through the robot, to keep each other accountable.
Personalised notification sounds and customisable robot faces, to make interacting with the robot more enjoyable.