The project in numbers
90+ Survey respondents across various corporate teams
5+ Prototyping Group & Individual Sessions
2+ Platform Ideas formed from key opportunity spaces

Country
Lebanon & MENA (Dubai)

Overview
In 2018, during my design consultancy at Sqwirl Lab, a couple of years before remote work became the norm (pre-pandemic), this project started as a primarily “To Do” app called CIRCLE. However, during the design process, it pivoted into a remote “Team Collaboration” Platform called REMOTELY.ME. The key offerings were: 

Goal
Getting things done (shifting from words to action) plus facilitating team collaboration and communication remotely.
• Use Circle first thing in the morning before even reaching work or university
• Time Efficiency

Client Problems
• Lack of user insights, journey flow and purpose or narrative
• What is the key strongest feature? (is it converting a chat into a task?)

Outcome
The CIRCLE Platform Design: App & Website.
The REMOTELY.ME Platform Idea

Research
At first, in order to test assumptions and understand the industry, research was carried out about collaboration trends/tools, millennials’ preferences, collaboration human behavior, importance of video conferencing and the efficiency of writing task lists (or to do lists as some prefer calling them). The findings involved listing the common needs of various stakeholders along with competing/similar apps in the global digital market.

Reframed Problem
How can we have either casual or work conversations and collaboration that can turn into plans or to do lists in a more personalized way?

Insights
• The feeling of accomplishment when striking off a to do on a written list is highly favoured
• When employees are in physical proximity in the office, they prefer speaking or calling if remote versus using an app to collaborate
• People at work like to have a sense of Belonging by staying updated on Group chats and keeping Archive of talks
• Essential to merge chat with an action – without working over-time
• Design for Casual Natural Chats versus Work Serious Chats
• Desktop vs. App usage depends on work load and nature of tasks
• Tension between the Ideal app (all in one integration) versus a Simple one (Easy not heavy)
• Practicality & Habit shapes their behavior

Ideation & Service Concepts
• Personalised Authentic Aspect (task generation & creation can be like a personal note with custom colors, fonts, etc.). Creating Smart Task Lists with Task
• Categorisation Scheduling Meetings & adding people to Circles
• Convenience & Reliability: Instantaneous talking for urgencies
• Notebook/ Paper feel or experience
• Setting Reminders / Priorities
• Simplicity & Reliability
• Facilitates Working remotely
• Declutter for Efficiency
• Turning Chat into organized Action and Voice commands into Tasks
• Ease of providing Visual Feedback (Image / Video) such as Miro
• Balancing the corporate with the friendly 

PIVOT Opportunity
• Re-purposing CIRCLE into a remote collaboration system “REMOTELY.ME”

Reframed Problem
How can we design a user-friendly Remote Collaboration System?
• The benefits of Remote Working are numerous and it’s getting popular. Thus, people will need better systems and solutions to do so.
• Understand how people work today in a physical space and reinvent a system that helps them work remotely from a virtual space – anywhere.

Future State
With this app, colleagues talk, meet, present, give feedback, ask each other to complete tasks,
remind each other of tasks, talk privately, leave a document on someone’s “virtual desk”, take breaks to go off-radar, use tools to communicate (such as Slack or Zoom), exchange and store files on the cloud, etc.

Key learnings
With the plethora of collaboration, communication, to do and project management apps, staying relevant yet ahead of  the competition is vital. In this project, the most challenging aspect was convincing the client to test, strengthen and re-iterate the ideas for only ONE key feature instead of testing several ones. Often, all it takes is ONE innovative main feature to make the product stand out.