Bring Out The Tribe In Your Team
A tribe is a group of individuals that is loyal and dedicated towards each other and a common cause.
We strongly believe that a good team can make any idea a successful one. Our aim through this project was to create tools that would enable a team of like-minded individuals to take their collaboration skills to the next level by helping them to convert their teams into tribes, and produce the best outcomes in the workplace.
Slate is a collaborative and expressive tool that allows your entire team to build ideas together. Slate helps turn any space into an environment where ideas can be freely expressed and discussed.
Slate is a portable whiteboard that improves collaboration between team members. Slate has been designed to allow team members to freely express and edit ideas.
We studied different office cultures to understand how teams collaborate and build ideas.
GenZ are expected to comprise up to 36% of the global workforce by 2020. These new entrants are digital natives who expect strategic use of software and technology in the workplace, as they are the first generation to grow up entirely in an internet-centric society. Hence companies are adapting their strategies to ensure that they can attract and retain young talent. .
The potential market for design in India is increasing with executive teams loving the novelty of design games and co-creation exercises The popularity of design thinking has seen more traditional consultancies adopt these tools.
The increase of remote workers have increased by approximately 115% over a span of a decade. This management trend is beneficial to both companies and families. Evolving technologies are also making it easier for these companies to communicate and collaborate with their remote workers through project management softwares.
Office spaces are being created to encourage team collaboration. The space inside the office are being designed for more smooth collaborative work. There is an increase in use of post its and glass walls for ideation.
GenZ are expected to comprise up to 36 percent of the global workforce by 2020. These new entrants are digital natives who expect strategic use of software and technology in the workplace, as they are the first generation to grow up entirely in an internet-centric society. Hence companies are adapting their people strategies to ensure that they can attract and retain young talent. .
The potential market for Design in India is increasing with executive teams loving the novelty of design games and co-creation exercises The popularity of design thinking has seen more traditional consultancies adopt these tools, often fairly haphazard.
The increase of remote workers have increased by approximately 115% over a span of a decade. This management trend is beneficial to both companies and families. Evolving technologies are also making it easier for these companies to communicate and collaborate with their remote workers through project management softwares.
Office spaces are being created to encourage team collaboration, The space inside the office are being designed for more smooth collaborative work, there is an increase in use of post its, glass walls are build to ideate upon and more number of common spaces within the companies.
We found that there was a need for physical collaboration tools where ideas can be expressed and built upon during team meetings.
Our research helped us identify key trends unfolding in the workplace. In order to really understand user behaviours, we conducted interviews of college students across disciplines, as well as freelancers and remote workers in co-working spaces.
Interviews with college students gave us an idea of what the future workforce needed, while interviews with established freelancers and remote workers helped us identify the problems of todays' work spaces.
We spoke to freelancers and remote workers along with college students to get a better understanding of their needs.
Synthesis of the acquired data from the potential and existing users indicated that there is a need for collaborative tools that are affordable, portable and accessible.
We scoured the market for all types of tools our users utilize to collaborate and brainstorm in a work environment, and we found that the following four were the most recurring in their usage.
The demand for editable writable surfaces is increasing amongst the workforce. Although the above products are heavily utilized in office spaces, they lack one of the three key requirements which are affordability, portability and accessibility.
Slate was designed to strike a perfect balance between our core requirements of portability, affordability and space. Since our aim was to ‘Bring Out The Tribe in Your Team’, it was important to set the design language accordingly.
The design language of the product should be something that looks like it belongs in the workplace, but also should help the user stand out. We derived a theme called “Posterize your Efforts” for the product.
Slate is a branded printed sheet which is laminated via a new manufacturing technique developed by us called double lamination. It is a rollable, portable and classy whiteboard that you can take anywhere, fix anywhere, and use just like a regular whiteboard. The packaging of slate includes a pack of Tack-It which is manufactured by Faber Castell. Tack-It helps Slate fix to any surface without leaving any marks.
The goal here was to create a brand that can resonate with our audience. The brand was designed with a ‘smart casual’ vibe and this theme was abstracted into the logo, typeface, colour palette and packaging to provide a holistic experience.
Designing a good packaging experience for this product was as important as the product itself, as it was the users' first impression of the product and the brand. We decided that the packaging should be something that our users would want to show off and could compliment their office attire without looking out of place.
After we created a high fidelity prototype of the product, we held a soft launch of the product for user testing. The launch was a huge success, as we received a total of 150 orders on the first day. Seeing users interacting with the product and giving feedback also helped us come up with improvements for the next iteration of the product.
This project helped us understand how a simple idea and great user experience design can create products that change a users' perceptions. Having an innovative product or idea alone cannot guarantee brand growth overtime, the product should be part of a vision that the brand sets. The product enables the user to become a part of that vision.