Hejsan

Interaction Design | UX Design | Inclusive Design

An object that fosters social interaction in hybrid collaboration,
through collective-decision making

About the project

Concept Video

Research

We had 3 observational studies, interviewed 12 students, 3 University Professors and facilitated several inclusive co-creation sessions, to get a broader understanding of how the students collaborate together with their professors.

Most of this project was performed during Covid19. Around 30% of their class are studying from a different location than Umeå and is struggling to feel fully engaged.

Many of the students and teachers were unknown to us, so we started out with a draw yourself, tell us about your mood and your aspirations for this collaboration — which to our surprise, worked better online than face to face.

Shared Faculty Session

Student Interviews

Participatory Creation

Testing and Workshops

We had several workshops with students and teachers trying to accommodate their suggestions, the sensemaking of earlier interviews and placing the key components correctly both face to face and online.

The overall goal of the class was better collaboration. We decided to hone down on these elements to help the students collaborate and feel more together across the distances.

Usability and Interface Workshops

In these workshops, we realized the importance of feeling connected to the physical space even if it was a hybrid session — it isn’t the programme itself, but it is how it makes us feel connected to our group or team that is vital.

They understood the collectivity quite well but highlighted, that the individuals online needed to have the possibility to skip out or mute, to level the playing field properly.

Behind the Scenes

1: The main point of interaction happens with your group’s members on the screen
2: The Space change dial, helps change mental state and digital space to differentiate leisure and work time.
3: The Presence Blur lowers the distractions when doing deep work, muffling the sounds, but not muting them, as you can’t do that in real life.
4: Volume dials for the music and speech, to adjust for hearability and preference.
5: Speakers on both sides of Hejsan.

Highlights

UI / UX Sketches

Testing and Evaluating

Insights

The Physical and the Digital UI should be connected, the interface should be simple,
to help everyone, no matter their tech savviness to understand the basics.

Together with the students we placed the UI elements on a grid, to help the students explain and evaluate why they found some elements more useful than others.

HEJSAN

Equalising the power dynamics in hybrid collaboration through collective decision making

When one of the group members changes space the windows gets pixelated, giving a group notification, muffling the music or sound in the background. When the participants join the other space, the music, sound and video get back to normal once again.

For deep or focused work, some of the students wished for less distractions, so we gave both sides the possibility to pull down the Presence Blur and hide the view, but without loosing the feeling the group member being present.

Project Role & Essential Learning

In this project inclusivity was a big part, we tried to participate on equal terms, and give every group member an equal voice, no matter if it was internally or with the participants — it was important to ensure that it was an offer and not a demand to participate, and thank people for their help if they couldn’t continue the participation.