top of page
The Route to the Future of Work
What is Black Box
Black Box is a service that provides workers a private and safe space in the workplace to release their emotional pressure. With an emotional responsive AI implanted, workers can have a non-human channel to vent their emotions or problems without any confidential concerns. Releasing emotional stress allows workers to provide organizations with a boost in productivity.
We Started with Five Words
Digital
Safety
Inclusive
Commute
Non-Human
To begin, through observation each team member provided a topic that is entangled with people’s daily life. With these unique topics in mind, we searched for an area where all five topics overlap.
By connecting the dots between those five words we are attempting to create an innovative service, driven by human-centered data.
After analyzing from a systemic perspective the human-centered data of the five topics from a systemic perspective, we found that most of the data points toward transportation services. Following
our first unsuccessful attempt to detach from the ordinary, we decided to find a more remarkable concept by interviewing people. These interviews yielded results similar to our first attempt. The
responses were all based on services like Uber, driverless buses, and self-servicing cars.
These five words were used to experiment and explore human behavior and memory in order to evolve the ordinary into the extraordinary before synthesizing the findings into an innovative service or product.
Our Process
Meet the Team
Andrew Zanoni
B.F.A Industrial Design
B.F.A Service Design
Role:
Design Researcher
Product Designer
"In the workplace safety should always be a top concern."
Yvonne Chen
M.F.A Service Design
Role:
Design Researcher
Brand Designer​
"I want to use technology to improve our lives."
Tucker Witter
M.F.A Service Design
Role:
Design Researcher
Industry Facilitator​
"I try to capture
traditionally
overlooked
communities
while designing."
Rachel Tarulli
B.F.A Service Design
Role:
Design Researcher
Workshop Facilitator​
"I've always been interested in how people get from point A to point B."
Siddhunt Patel
M.F.A Service Design
Role:
Design Researcher
Content Strategist
"I want to design a service centered around animals."
Research Flow
Our research is driven with a mindset focused on human-centered design with deep empathy toward the people we are designing for. We strive to be innovative, recognize patterns, and construct ideas that are not only meaningful but functional and unorthodox.
We framed and re-framed our topic using different prototyping methods. Our purpose was to develop a narrative that satisfies deeper human needs.
The Search for an Area of Interest
Word Association
We began with a survey to collect data associated with our five ordinary words. After analyzing 341 different responses, we identified the top nine words most commonly associated with our five ordinary words.
Connecting the Dots
In order to connect the three areas of interest back to the original five words, we designed an abstract thinking workshop. The workshop also helped to design the most compelling narrative and identified a concept nested on top of the narrative. We had a total of 18 participants split into six groups.
Brainstorming Workshop
Our workshop participants ranged from fellow students, SCAD staff, and other students from around Savannah.
​
Using our poster as a roadmap asked everyone to carefully debate their responses and record them on Post-It notes before asking everyone to walk the room and vote for the narrative they thought was the best fit.
Step 1:
Narrowing the Field
Each group was given the top nine words which we identified during the word association experiment. The participants were responsible for choosing a word they thought was the best fit for each topic; work,
off-grid and negative emotions.
Step 2:
Building Narratives
We asked each group to write a short narrative using the three words they picked.
Step 3:
Brainstorming Service Concepts
The groups brainstormed different service concepts based on their narratives while being mindful the concept should nest the product on top of the service.
Step 4:
Why?
After recording their service concepts we asked the groups to rationalize their concepts.
Step 5:
Show and Tell
All of the groups shared their narratives and service concepts with the rest of the workshop participants.
Step 6:
Voting
​Everyone used a sticker to vote for what they thought was the most compelling narrative and service.
Brainstorming Workshop Results
In the end, this group's responses stood out from the rest as being the most unique by popular vote.
An alien lost his job as a computer engineer to an emotionless robot.
How can this be used to create a unique product?
Why is this a breakthrough?
This narrative is a breakthrough because we turned five boring and ordinary words into an interesting and unique short narrative that resonates with our audience. The narratives construction and its resonance which can all be supported by hard data.
Moving forward we can use this narrative as a springboard to create an innovative product or service concept.
We compared the responses from each group to look for additional trends we could incorporate into the details behind our narrative.
Work can be stressful, stress has been proven to have a negative effect on our productivity causing workers to underperform.
In an ideal world, companies would train their employees to be able to properly read, process and vent their emotions while they work to increase their productivity and overall job satisfaction. The quality of this emotional support would be so robust that emot
Secondary Research
What is
Emotional Labor
The expression of emotions desired by the organization for which one works.
What is
Surface Acting
The act of workers regulating their emotional expression by altering their displayed feelings under the requirement of their employer.
What is
Deep Acting
The act of workers altering their internal feelings to match the emotional expressions that are required by their employers.
What is
Work-Related Stress
A mental state resulting in an adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them at work.
How are these related?
A mental state resulting in an adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them at work.
A mental state resulting in an adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them at work.
bottom of page