Women At Engineering Workplace

Designing more comfortable workspace for women

- Human Centred Design, UX Research
- Human Centered Design

Timeframe

Jan 2020 – Apr 2020

Team Members

Vinethaa Krishnaswamy Govindaraj, Vanessa Pangbourne, Avani Mehta, & Xiaoqian Yang

Project Summary

Equity and inclusion are huge issues in the engineering field. Most engineering workplaces are still male dominated even as more women enter engineering degree programs. One of the main concerns is the retention rate of women in engineering as many decide to pursue non-engineering roles. “30% of the women who left the engineering profession cited organizational climate as the reason” and “only 30% of women who earn degrees in engineering are still in the engineering field 20 years later”. Generally, companies still have an issue of creating spaces that are welcoming and inclusive for underrepresented groups, including women. Our guiding question was how might we create a more inclusive workplace for women? Based on the insights gained from interviews and research we determined that many of the unconscious biases and inequality at work could be addressed if we addressed the overall company culture. By doing this not only would we help create a better environment for female engineers but also for anyone who has felt excluded at work. We would also be able to tackle the biases and inequalities that create the larger issue. We were able to design a platform that humanizes coworkers and facilitates connections, overall creating a more welcoming and relaxed work environment and hopefully minimizing instances of discrimination.

Specific Problem

Women employees at engineering workplace feel isolated because of unconscious bias and stereotypes that exist in their workplace. It is important to solve this issue  because it adds value in creating positive workplace environment, eliminating workplace discrimination, increase women employees contribution that improves the team performance, productivity and growth of the organization.

HMW Statement

How might we establish a positive work environment for women engineers in order to make them feel valued, comfortable, happy, and  productive at their workplace?

Specific User:

Recent women engineering graduates and women employees who works in engineering workplace.

Solution

A web application that builds relationships, bridges the gap, establish  connectivity, women employees who are new to the organization and recent graduates can have a career mentorship from successful experienced women employees who work in the same organization. From the web application features, it helps the opposite gender to understand the woman employee’s hard work and talents.

My Role

  1. Created stakeholder mappings to identify the primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders.
  2. Interviewed women in engineering workforce stakeholders to gather their thoughts on the work environment.
  3. Prepared current scenario storyboard and collected the feedback from stakeholders.
  4. Created the scenario mappings and user flow based on the design metaphor to develop the design solution for the women in the engineering workplace.
  5. Collected the feedback and designed the primary prototype using Mural. Iterated the design process and created the final version of the web application.
  6. Conducted the usability testing and observed the user satisfaction.

Methodologies

Bubble Diagrams
Stakeholder Mapping
User Research - Interviews & Observation
User Personas and Storyboards
Value Proposition Model and Design Metaphor

Tools

Mural and Web node
Adobe Illustrator
Marvel

Overview of Design Process

User Cenetred Solutions

Design Process in Detail​​​​​​​

Step: 1 - User research

Interviewed users to capture their thoughts and created the stakeholder map and bubble diagrams.

The users are mostly women who

  • Work in engineering
  • Recent graduates who want guidance
  • Feel their ideas are not valued at workplace
  • Who are not satisfied with their current work field
  • Who thinks they are not capable to do engineering work
In some cases, it includes everyone in the organization who has at some point felt excluded, undervalued, misunderstood at work

Quotes from users during interview

“I like my workplace, the only thing I find difficult is networking because of lack of connectivity”

- Pavithra Murthy, CIBC Bank, Network Engineer, Toronto, Canada

“As a engineering manager, in one-on-one meetings I will be more careful with my words especially speaking to a woman employee in the team ”

- Pradeep Venkatesh, Engineering Manager, Aviva Canada

Stakeholder Map & Bubble Diagram

Stakeholder Map

Bubble Diagram

Step: 2 - Pain Points in to Actionable Goals

From the user interview, identified the pain points and defined the actionable goals

Pain Points

Lack of mentorship guidance to achieve career goals Difficulties to overcome stereotypes and unconscious bias at workplace Feels isolated and energy level drop
- Lack of mentorship guidance to achieve career goals
- Difficulties to overcome stereotypes and unconscious bias at workplace
- Feels isolated and energy level drop
- Lack of understanding about co-workers especially women employees
  • Stereotypes about women
  • Sometimes women lack of confidence or believe they aren’t capable
  • Social and psychological problem that faced by women in society and family makes them voiceless

Needs

- Chance to prove their capabilities
- Feel valued and respected
- Feel recognized and equal priority as male peers
- More Experience from professional engineers
- Mentorship
- Overall positive company culture

Actionable Goals

- Fix gender equality
- Reduce bias thinking on women
- Improve the experience of female engineering students
- Bridging the gap or enhance networks & connections
- Encourage women to pursue engineering as their career option

Step: 3 - User Personas and User Journey

User Persona

Existing Scenarios
Name:
Rachel Greene
Age:
30
Work:
Engineering professor
Scenario:
Hiring new professor to teach technical engineering courses

Concerns and goals

Wants to hire more women, but received resumes only 1/10 applicants were women. Gender bias in hiring sometimes is because there aren’t enough applicants. Women may believe they are not capable of being engineers. This perspective is further confirmed when they see more male-dominated workplaces.

User Persona

Existing Scenarios
Name:
Pavithra Murthy
Role/Job:
Network and cyber - security engineer
Age:
25
Scenario:
Workplace comfortability and career guidance

Concerns and goals

The team doesn't have an equal number of female employees so that makes her uncomfortable shift based work and men are preferred to work in night shifts than women. There is no lunchroom and there is some level of uncertainty that exists in her career regarding the next steps due to the lack of mentorship. As there is less number of women employees working in her field.

User Persona

Existing Scenarios
Name:
Newel Behih
Role/Job:
User Experience Design at Tech Company
Age:
25
Scenario:
Workplace stereotypes and unconscious bias

Concerns and goals

Newel had a pretty bad experience at her current company as a Muslim woman in a new role (LIX) which the company has never had. This has led to many conflicts with the software engineers and other teams she has joined including being left out of meetings, ignored for approvals, and needing to assert her position and value with every single person she works with. She also felt excluded socially since she wasn't invited to lunches or even talked to for three months.

User Journey Map

Created a quick user journey from the user research data to understand the loop holes and problems that faced by women engineers in every stage of their career. This quick and messy map helped us in understanding the user and it took us near the user goals.

Step 4 : Iterate and Improve

  1. Explored multiple possible solution using brainstorming, value proposition model  and design metaphor.
  2. Created storyboards and experience mapping or affinity diagrams.
  3. Collected the feedback from the user at every  step and made changes when needed.

Brainstorming

Design Metaphor

A new technique used in identifying a solution that satisfies the user's needs. Project Goal: Design a workplace that  makes the women engineers to feel valued.
Design Metaphor: Beach
Based on the design metaphor activity as shown in the figure below, we designed the solution in fraction of minutes. This methodology is life saver

Value Proposition Model

Project Goal: Build comfortable & inclusive work environment for women in engineering
Product/Idea: Website for engineering workplaces that features profiles of employees
Features
- Highlight work and personal life
- Connect with me section
- Fun quizzes
Benefits:
- Employees feel valued
- Decreased biases and stereotypes
- Develop trust and flexibility
Experience
- Positive and welcoming environment
- Increased connections
- Excitement to know more about their colleagues

REFINED VALUE PROPOSITION

  1. For employees who work at engineering companies, we offer a website that profiles coworkers and humanizes them, reducing gender stereotypes & biases and improving company culture.
  2. For graduate students who wish to pursue their careers in engineering companies, we offer a website that helps them connect to leaders (women/men) and gives them someone to look up to thereby relieving any discomfort they anticipate.
  3. For employers/managers who supervise employees, we offer a website that gives them better knowledge of their employee’s lives and personalities, helping them be better leaders.

Elevator Pitch

“Know Me” is a website that employees can use to learn about their coworkers and connect with each other by viewing profiles, completing fun quizzes and using the ‘connect me’ feature, new employees can connect with the existing mature employees to enhance their networks.

Storyboard

Scenario - Mary who is working as an engineer feels undervalued and not recognized for her work.

Step: 5 - Prototyping

Developed the basic level prototypes using Mural design space based on the brainstormings. ​​​​​​​

Final Version of prototypes using web node.

To access the website:  
https://know-me5.webnode.com/

Profile Section:

The profile section will highlight specific workers every two weeks showing their work and home lives in a different light. The profiled person will fill out a survey that will be compiled into a profile that will demonstrate not only their work accomplishments but also some of their passions and hobbies outside of work. This aims to humanize coworkers and for people to find commonalities hopefully then reducing the stereotypes and biases that people may have towards each other.

Connect Me:

This function offers young engineers who have the less working experience to get connect with professional engineers to talk about their problems and make them feel less isolated (offering mentorship). The Connect Me feature also comes with the option of becoming a mentor, where once the employee completes their profile in the profile section, they will be notified if they are eligible to be a mentor, and will be directed to the option- if they would want to become a mentor. Also, employees can schedule a coffee chat with their co-workers or higher officials to expand or maintain their career network.

Quizzes:

The objective behind the quizzes is to offer some stress-free time and refreshment to the employees, as well as educating them on the “not so common” aspects of their co-workers. They are all over-worked and can always use some getaway time from the stressful environment at workplaces. The quizzes will be themed on interesting and fun topics: for example:  Which Friends character are you most like? Once the employee is done taking the quiz, they will be forwarded to their results, which will also showcase the results of other employees who have taken the quiz.
For example: If employee A took the quiz and got results as Chandler, the result page will also show, employee B from XYZ department also got Chandler. The result page will also show statistics such as 6, displaying other employees in the company also got the same score - Chandler. This enhances connecting with employees from a perspective that is probably not very usual, and yet very interesting.

Newsfeed:

This section will release the latest news about the company like new hires, the latest social event, company policies and shouts out. For example, we will post people’s profiles and what is their professional field so that everyone can know who they are working with. We also post company policies to help people to know the company rules. We also want to celebrate people who do a good job. We design a shouts out section in order to encourage people to work hard and show their respect

Resources:

In order to directly address our goal of improving gender inequality, we wanted to target the Resource section to women and other underrepresented groups. This will include creating a centralized location for resources the partnering company has available as well as further information like suggested conversation topics for mentors and mentees, articles, and empowering information.

Step: 6 - Usability Testing

At every stages of the design process, the user testing was done and the changes are made when it is needed. Web application was given to the users and observed their gestures and expressions to know their satisfaction level.

Improvements from user feedback:

  1. The design solution was changed as a web application instead of a mobile application because at some organization the employees are not allowed to use mobile phones during work hours.
  2. Gave importance to the easy navigation and implemented the information architecture principles.
  3. Included the group video call option which is very useful especially with COVID19, everyone is doing WFH. To make them connected with each other as a team, the group video chat is the best option and also it will act as a stress buster.

Project Outcome & Benefits

Overall, as a team, we believe that our prototype, with further refining, has the potential to shape company culture into a more inclusive, welcoming environment where all employees can thrive. This would not only benefit the employees who can work in these better conditions but also the company’s productivity, engagement, profits and reputation. By centralizing company resources and creating a space where employees can get to know each other at a more personal level and facilitate further connections, we believe that biases and stereotypes will decrease. Not only will discriminatory behaviors decrease by creating this new environment but we will also actively create opportunities for women to learn and grow in their careers to be best equipped to handle the realities of the engineering field. Through the insights gained from interviews and the design process we believe that this human-centered approach to a major societal issue could help shift attitudes and bring about positive change.

Key Takeaways:

  1. A user - centred design solution will save time, cost and energy. It facilities to fail fast succeed faster strategy.
  2. Creating user personas removes personal opinions, easy to describe the target users and identify priority features.
  3. Design metaphors and analogy breaks down the design barriers and helps to get closer to design solution.

Interviews Summary

Interviewee Name :
Bria Jamison
Role/ Job :
Environmental Condultunt (Site Solutions) @Ramboll
Age :
23
Interview Summary :
Overall, as a team, we believe that our prototype, with further refining, has the potential to shape company culture into a more inclusive, welcoming environment where all employees can thrive. This would not only benefit the employees who can work in these better conditions but also the company’s productivity,
Overall, as a team, we believe that our prototype, with further refining, has the potential to shape company culture into a more inclusive, welcoming environment where all employees can thrive. This would not only benefit the employees who can work in these better conditions but also the company’s productivity,

User Persona

Existing Scenarios
Name:
Pavithra Murthy
Role/Job:
Network and cyber - security engineer
Age:
25
Scenario:
Hiring new professor to teach technical engineering courses

Concerns and goals

The team doesn't have an equal number of female employees so that makes her uncomfortable Shift based work so, men are preferred to work in night shifts that women. No lunchroom or mentorship and there is some level of uncertainty that exists in her career regarding the next steps. Due to the lack of mentorship. As there is less number of women employees working in her field.

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