Office automation refers to the varied computer machinery and software used to digitally create, collect, store, manipulate, and relay office information needed for accomplishing basic tasks. This is the definition of office automation(OA) from Wikipedia. Office automation was a popular term in the 1970s and 1980s as the desktop computer onto the scene (Abdur, 2018). In the early years the term OA means all tools that can help workers deal with office activities. Such as some hardwares or softwares support people to collect data, manage files and make announcements etc. With the popularization of technology, it seems that people need to do more work in a more convenient and efficient way. As the types and weight of work tasks increase, people’s requirements for the OA system have become more and more complex. So now OA system is intended to provide elements which make it possible to simplify, improve, and automate the task organization of the company (Abdur, 2018).
When I was an employee in an IT company, with the help of different office softwares, I could work in a more productive way. Especially I used the Office Automation platform the most, which is named DingTalk. It turns out that people really need a systematic management tool at work. Basically, I think if I can conduct a complete user research for improving DingTalk. There will be some potential benefits for many companies and everyone who uses DingTalk in the workplace. And In this process, I will get a lot of product design information, and better understand the relationship between product iteration and user needs.
We could say that human's pursuit of efficiency has promoted the development of human society. Especially in China, there is a competitive environment for people of various occupations. Many companies usually need to have an extraordinary performance to get an external competitiveness. In this research, I mainly focused on improving efficiency of communication and collaboration among companies through systematic solution(micro-applications). In the digital age, the powerful OA systems reduces manual workload and stores large amounts of data in a small space. They not only simplify daily work, but also speed up information retrieval. In addition, these tools increase process visibility and help companies easily find bottlenecks.
DingTalk as the earliest online office automation platform, has a wide user base. Moreover, due to the impact of COVID-19, many school courses can only be conducted online. Some teachers and administrators began to use DingTalk as an assistant to manage classes. Thus, the increase of user requirement from different fields will be a challenge forDingTalk. As a result, my research question generated through above reasons. “How to improve mobile OA platform to help us work efficiently in different industries ? ”
At first, I distributed my survey questionnaire among participants to gain some basic information and general views. I distributed the survey to 60 people, and 30 of them responded which had a response rate of 50%. Because there are certain basic conditions for people participating in the survey. They have to meet these standards, then they can understand the questions in the survey and give the answer. The following criteria in order to participate: 1) Be a worker, and employee or employer in a company, state-owned business, or some institutions; 2) Have worked more than three months; 4)Have downloaded and used the some basic functions of DingTalk(e.g., at least used it for attendance, be invited to a project meeting or contacted with a colleague ); 5) Not work for a DingTalk competitor. So it is quite difficult to require all people at work to complete, or even participate my survey. In other words, the response rate with 50% was reasonably high for this project.
Generally, through this survey, I collected specific information. For example, how long the participants have been working and how often they use DingTalk. In this way, I got a rough idea of the familiarity of the participants, so that I can measure the reliability of the collected information. Next, participants answered which functions they used mostly. What I can get from this kind of question is that the function could reprioritize. It can be the reference for my card sorting category. And then I want to collect their general attitude which is judged by whether DingTalk is helpful to them. I have checked the questionnaire several times and conducted a pilot test by one of my participants. So there is a feedback that the two responsive questions showed up together. Actually, according to the expected settings, they will appear separately according to your choice. Thanks to the participant that I corrected the setting of this questionnaire so that I got the complete form.
I used the most commonly used functions of DingTalk to draw from the survey results. Make them into cards or categories. So in total, there are 6 categories and 24 cards that were all made by me.These function cards are familiar to the participants so they can understand their meaning. A card sort helps me elicit from my participants the groups that already exist in their minds. I then strive to replicate these groupings in DingTalk. By doing so, users will be able to easily find what they are looking for when using DingTalk.
In this research, I interviewed the two participants one-on-one and got a lot of details. They were recruited through a convenient sample. One is a newcomer who has just joined work, and the other one has worked for more than 3 years. I chose these two participants to get a more persuasive result by analyzing the feedback of new users and old users. The interview is the way to get the real thoughts of users. As long as the communication environment makes users feel safe and private, they will be more relaxed to discuss with researchers and express their own views.
In a focus group, people are brought together to discuss their experiences or opinions around topics introduced by a moderator who facilitates an open, nonjudgmental atmosphere. Focus groups have more people involved than interviews, so that they are better able to guide the participants’ ideas. It generates more opinions and we can look at problems from multiple angles. In order to obtain a more accurate evaluation of DingTalk from different industry groups. Two focus group was conducted on a fixed date. A total of 6 participants were recruited based on the convenience sample and snowball sample.Three participants were from the Internet industry, and the other three were in education.
The survey contained 30 responses. Participants were 10 males and 20 females, mainly in the 18 - 4 0 age group, and only 13.3% were over 40. There is 53.3% of them which has worked for more than three years, and 20% has worked for less than 6 months. Overall, the work experience of the participants is relatively sufficient. Over a half participants(56.7%) has used DingTalk for more than half a year. Next, the interesting thing is that the percentage distribution of the using frequency is relatively even. The 30% of participants uses DingTalk barely (Only when requested) and 30% of them uses twice or once a day. The 36.7% of participants uses it several times a day. Only 1 user uses it once or twice a week. This means that more than half of people use DingTalk every day.
Through the investigation of common functions(see figure below), we can see what features are required for most users. The survey of commonly used functions can imply the basic needs of users, and then to ensure the priority of optimization can be gave to relevant functions to achieve a better user experience.
Although the participants' sample is not very large, the participants' background is relatively rich (see Figure below). It can also reveal that there are more industries starts to use tools to assist to their daily work from the statistical results.
Lastly, according to the reasons why users feel that DingTalk is not helpful, we can intuitively see the pain points of DingTalk collected through the survey. It helped me find the right direction in the future research methods. Regardless of the nature of work, what can be seen now is that the functions is too complicated, and this office application needs to be distinguished from personal private life.
The online sorts helped us to gain a deeper understanding of how participants interpreted the categories of DingTalk. Focus on the standardization grid (see figure below), the darker the color density, the stronger the correlation between the two cards, which means that they may belong to a unified classification. On the contrary, it shows that they are weakly related and do not belong to the same category. It can be seen as that some commonly used functions which the participants uses normally are assigned smoothly, and a few unfamiliar cards have weak correlation to other cards. Such as ‘Employee perks’.
Additionally, three new categories were created by two participants (figures below). This potentially prove that these participants may have their own operating habits of DingTalk, which is different with the common operation design of DingTalk.
The similarity matrix reflects this more intuitively (figure below). The higher the value, the stronger the similarity between the two cards. Based on the results of this data analysis, the distribution of various primary and secondary functions can be readjusted.This result can be used as a reference for next iteration of this product.
Due to the insufficient size of the interview sample, the interview results are not representative and can only be used as one of the references for determining the initial research direction. During the interview with two participants as will be called P1 & P2 in the content that follows, they described the problems they encountered in the process of using DingTalk and the overall experience from different perspectives. P1 as a newcomer in the workplace who has not been working for a long time, focuses more on the distinction between private life and work life. It shows that currently people pay more attention to a working environment that distinguishes between public and private. As a person who has longer working experience, P2 is obviously more familiar with the functions of the entire app, and P2 also made corresponding suggestions for many lower-level functions. For example, more detailed operations for online meetings. In addition, she also compared DingTalk with the new app she was using. The function of DingTalk is more mature and the system is more stable. This is the advantage that DingTalk must maintain. It also proves that the stability of an app is inseparable from the support of an experienced Research and Design(R&D) team.
According to these two participants' experience and thoughts on using DingTalk. I have a better understanding of the solution to the research problem. At present, it can be carried out from the direction of privacy and functional refinement. Surely, this is only a reflection based on the results of this interview. More specific conclusions need to be drawn after data analysis of all user methods.
In the focus group discussion, participants described the overall experience of DingTalk based on their respective work content. While presenting their personal demands, they also discussed the improvements that I can make based on the current situation of the entire industry. In group 1, the participants appeared more active and the atmosphere was more active. The content of the discussion is also broader, and many suggestions have detailed information. The whole process is smoother. In detail, the team pointed out that for some special reasons, the work content is confidential. Therefore, they must use the company's self-developed software to transfer work tasks.But due to the immaturity of the software, they chose to use it in combination with ding. This is currently an unsolvable situation. Regarding the issue of confidentiality, Agreements can only be sighed at the corporate level. In the discussion of group 2, the speeches of the participants were more refined. The overall discussion time is shorter than that of group 1, but because the content displayed by the participants is more complete and specific. The information received is sufficient. Group 2 focuses more on reducing the redundancy of the ding function.
The main purpose of this research was to help improve the functionality and user experience of a specific mobile OA platform, which also aimed to maximize users’ productivity. So far, I can get three preliminary solutions for my research question “How to improve mobile OA platform to help us work efficiently in different industries”. But it needs to be considered that this is only a preliminary idea, and the implementation of the specific plan requires further research and the cooperation of the research and development(R&D) team. So there are my ideas:
1)Iterate based on existing apps; According to the results of the research. Optimize the small functions under the online meeting category, and add common function areas to facilitate the user groups who only use fixed functions. Adjust user permissions, and the superior supervision should not put too much pressure on;
2)Launch a lightweight version for user groups who use less frequently but are required to use the app;
3) Publish detailed instructions or teaching videos to reduce user learning costs and get started using the app faster.
In fact, large-scale companies consume a lot of resources to optimize their digital products. The implementation of the plan also needs to consider key factors such as brand image capital investment. It cannot be solved by one-time complete user research activity. In this research, I only put forward solutions from the user's point of view based on users' feedback. I did not take into consideration on other aspects. It can only be said that the answer to the research question of this user research is an idealized app optimization based on user needs.
This project is not even a complete project which had been through a design process, but I still put it on my works. The reason I chose it are because, first, it was my first project which consists of user research activities I conducted completely independently. And this also the first time for me to apply the academic theories and methods I learned in Uni to my research. The works I did before was more like "behind the scenes, without reaching out to users and doing specific field research. Second, it was my own conception of project after entering my postgraduate studying career. Even though it seems to lack experience and sophistication. It laid the foundation of my desire to explore more about human-centered design. I cherish and appreciate the experience in this course very much.
After conducting the above four user research methods, I have gained some user research experience and of course encountered some obstacles. But these are worth learning. And it should be noted that before performing the entire research, you must determine whether your research problem is the development of new products or the exploration of existing products. That determines the order of certain research methods.
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