ABOUT

Our team tackled a "wicked problem" - How to motivate people to work together on their ideas?
We first needed to understand how people work in teams, and what barriers prevent them from accomplishing their goals. As the researcher, I began the process by recruiting participants, conducting the research and analyzing data for key insights. We observed students and professionals working together, and saw that some people do not contribute as much work as others in a team. We interviewed team members to find out why, and saw that different people in a team have different working styles. For example, some people prefer to generate ideas on their own in a quiet environment, then share them with the group.

To give all team members a creative voice, we built paper and digital prototypes of a potential brainstorming tool and tested them with actual teams working on a project. I observed users, gathered feedback, and communicated necessary changes in the interface to our developer and designer. Our final design concept solution, CUMULUS, is a brainstorming tool that helps team members come up with ideas quickly and painlessly.