Team Twine met in order to combine our research efforts over the past few weeks.  First Jason and Moon described the results of Dr. Winfield’s interview (soon to be posted).

Rachel and Andrew presented the results from their meeting concerning the incentivation and motivation of microblogging in the enterprise, as well as client-side user experiences.

  • Name displays and public recognition for contribution
  • Options for anonymity and privacy options

Aakash and Gaurav presented their findings about user interfaces for HR and clients.

For employees:

  • Auto-completion possibilities
  • Provide feedback and contextual actions
  • Easily accessible (i.e. integrated) interface and subsystems
  • Limitations to prevent excessive use and potential for abuse
  • Rewards for contributions

For HR:

  • Information aggregation provided over historical time frames (monthly, weekly, etc.)
  • Critical mass of information should engender action
  • Visualizations should provide apt information (long-term tracking, live feeds, morale rating, graphs)
  • Critical mass itself should be deterministically calculated and respond possibly organically to user input

Moon and Jason’s findings will be posted in the next topic.  Minutes after the jump.

- Dr Whinfield raised the concern that employee productivity might be an Issie, because such a system will be distracting. Rachel had an idea that we can tackle such distraction by removing all interactivity from the system, and sharing results only at the end of the month.
- We discussed that not providing too much interactivity and engagement might also help reduce the herd behavior, and only bring original issues from each user. Gaurav mentioned that herd behavior is a distraction but at the same time the engagement it provides is a big incentive for participation.
- Jason presented a very good idea, whereby he said that sometimes the interface itself is an engagement. He mentioned the example of solitaire game. I think inculcating game behavior is an excellent idea.
- Jason also mentioned that whining is anyway a reality of corporate life. People whine no matter what, so why not utilize the advantage of it. Although the system will encourage more whining, but its benefits outweigh negativity.
- We agreed that the system should not be mandatory to use. It should have an intuitive interface that encourages people to use it. E.g. simple forms, simple text box
- Anonymity should be optional. Provide a check box!
Incentives to contribute
- If a person’s name is displayed, it may incentivize to contribute.
- Public recognition is a big incentive to contribute. What if someone praised someone on the system: “I had a big project, and Rachel did a great job in helping me out.” Such public recognitions might lead to increase in bonus.
- It might motivate people with a promise that their voice will be heard.
Disincentives to contribute

- Privacy concerns
- Difficult to muster belief in the use of the system
Some UX thoughts/ Presentation to employees
- Provide auto-complete option while the user enters existing tweets
- Give some pointers: If you are having problems with Python, “OK looks like you are struggling with Python, This link might be helpful to you”
- Twitter has tons of applications; we must explore them to take some inspiration for the employees’ UX
- Interface should be easily accessible;
- It should be something that employees should not forget
- May be limit its use e.g the time you can access it, or the limited number of tweets in a day
- May be provide issue urgency and point value (exclamation points)
- We might also consider portability – providing the service on cellphone, blackberry etc?
- Some ideas for employee UX: Provide a toolbar, Provide as a system tray icon, Provide as a stand-along app
- After submission, see related tweets of first issue, Say “thanks for submitting this, other are worrying about this issue too”
- Make users see that they made a contribution to something
HR UX
- Information aggregates and presented to employee: weekly, monthly
- How HR shares the tweets with employees- should be determined by critical mass; needs collaboration ability with other stakeholders
- Visualizations (something more than just the graphs) are required e.g. quicken or yodlee
- Visualizations should be organic, so it doesn’t get boring
- Critical mass number should be a magic number determined by the system or provided by the person who set up the system?
Visualizations
- Long-term issue tracking (one issue per time)
- Issue volume (issue in relation to other)
- Issue relatedness (compared to others)
- Live feeds
- Company morals
- Possible graphs: line chart, bar chart, bubble tag cloud, RSS, Gauge
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