Project Duration

8 weeks: late October 2021 to December 2021

Advisor

Harry West, Professor of IEOR at Columbia University and Former CEO of frog.

My Role

I was responsible for my portion of user interviews and research, as well as contributing insights and information to our final presentation. Furthermore, I created all of our Figma prototypes and brand identity.

Task

Design for small spaces.

New York is the biggest city in the US. It also has some of the smallest spaces: apartments, bathrooms, kitchens, elevators, etc. It is also by far the densest city in the US. Think about what else is going on in New York City, in the US, in the world - culturally, economically, technologically.

1. As a team explore people and problems you might want to focus on. Make a choice of a territory. Engage with consumers, customers, citizens to uncover their needs, wants, and aspirations.

2. Identify a human problem you want to solve or opportunity to make possible.

3. Design a solution.

Our Design Idea

We are targeting the mental health of café workers as our small space.

Shift workers suffer higher rates of burnout compared to other industries. According to an interviewed shift worker at Starbucks, "In a bad situation, you are allowing someone to disrespect you for a 5 dollar drink. Nearly every day, you have an experience that is emotionally taxing/unpleasant, so towards the end, you just want to get off." Other interviewed coffee shop shift workers also shared sentiments of often leaving work feeling exhausted and having at least one bad customer interaction, which accelerates the mental exhaustion rate.

Territory

Mental health spaces for café shift workers in New York City: Mental health issues among café based shift workers are scarcely discussed or addressed, “a small space”. The prevalent and growing instances of burnout cause employee attrition and public health concerns.

Supporting Statistics

• “The top reasons for employee departure include burnout (40% overall but for hospitality/food service workers this jumps to 52%), organizational changes at the company (34%) as well as lack of flexibility, instances or discrimination, and contributions and ideas not being valued (all tied at 20%)” (Escobar 2021).

• “The increasing number of shift workers causes a growing public health concern, as shift work has been linked with chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases” (Vyas et al. 2012).

• “Shift work was significantly associated with lower scores on burnout distance (B − 1.0, 95% − 1.8 to 0.3), and among those aged < 48 years with burnout exhaustion (range B − 1.3 to − 1.6).” (G Hulsegge · 2020).

Café based shift workers in New York city face mental health concerns leading to burnout. This burnout comes as a result of different aspects of the baristas’ work environment and culture, of which we broke down by category in order to gain specific insights.

Operational Inefficiencies

• Insufficient staffing, ineffective team communications, lack of resources, and long work queues lead to mistakes and long wait times.

Poor Customer-Worker Interactions

• Upset customers berate employees for getting orders wrong or service taking too long, while the humanity of baristas is not factored into these interactions.

Feeling Unhappy & Burned Out

• Employees are tired and stressed due to long work hours, rude customers, and repetitive tasks at work.

Insufficient Work-Life Balance

• At the end of a shift, employees find it difficult to enjoy their time with family and loved ones, negatively affecting their ability to decompress.

Inadequate & Disturbed Sleep

• High stress adversely affects sleep quality, leading to lasting mental, physical, and psychological issues.

Customers: Café Employees/Baristas

Stakeholders: Café Employees/Baristas, Café Company, Company’s Consumers

In addressing the needs, wants, and aspirations of customers and stakeholders, we used the insights gathered from employee interviews in order to formulated the following structure for what exactly we need to keep in mind when ideating solutions.

Needs

• Increased boundaries between café based shift workers and the customers, as well as corporate protection for employees against rude customers.

• Boundaries between customers and workspace; protection from rude and inappropriate customers.

Wants

• To have employees be viewed as a stakeholder in the business transaction and have corporate see employee experiences as a valuable factor.

Aspirations

• To have a good work life balance and leave the job feeling energetic (or at least not feel drained/burned out).

Over the course of our solution ideation for this project, we threw around all sorts of ideas. From physical entities, to qualitative employee enhancement programs, we were unsure of exactly how to stay as true to the needs, wants, and aspirations of our interviewed employees, while also keeping in mind the logistics of physical space, cost, and change management, especially in a place like New York City. The different stages of ideation showcase the progressive filtering of ideas and how we ultimately landed on BFirst.

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Stage 1

Optimize the space and time food service shift workers have to decompress and relax during their breaks.

• Idea 1: Mindfulness Pods

  • Space to detach from the office environment reset from external stimulus, provides a break/escape from the repetitive daily routine.

• Idea 2: Mini Entertainment Center

  • Free services including Radio, Karaoke, HeadSpace tutorials, etc. Feature to connect with other co-workers during breaks.

• Idea 3: Digital Mindfulness + Help Technology

  • Company provided mental health resources, freelance and temporary position hiring help capabilities.

Insights from User Testing

The service workers we spoke to loved the idea of the mindfulness pods. As we discussed further with them, we realized the implementation off pods themselves is unlikely, but the concept of having a system in place that relives stress and anxiety is most important to them.

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Stage 2

Maximize barista shift workers’ relaxation during breaks, while maintaining feasibility.

• Combination of Stage 1 ideas, implemented through a holistic, employee-forward enterprise called Burnout Bubble.

  • Reclining chair, massage, and isolation elements in combination with an app with mindfulness resources, “We” mode for finding nearby shift workers on break, a bad experience reporting system “customer conflict report”, a burnout “SOS” button for emergency break bookings, and a general break booking system.

Insights from User Testing

The baristas we spoke to agreed that this solution is much more feasible, but not completely right. They appreciated the ability to tap out for a break in overwhelming situations, but still didn’t fully believe in the ability to be implemented.

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Stage 3

Reframe solutions based on revised aim of mitigating the mental exhaustion barista shift workers feel after escalated customer interactions.

• BFirst

  • Targets customer-employee interactions, bringing focus on shift based café employees as a stakeholder. Features include: customer rating system, weekly employee survey (randomly selected), thank you notes to baristas, rewards for good customers given at barista’s discretion, and an analytic dashboard to mitigate bias in barista rewards allocations.

Insights from User Testing

Our baristas loved this option. They understood it to be something that wouldn’t completely upend the way their stores run, making it feasible to be implemented, but also still had features in place that serve the purpose of giving them peace of mind.

BFirst challenges the notion that the “customer is always right.” Workers are burned out due to negative interactions with customers, which leads to a cycle of burnout. We aim to bring focus on employees as a stakeholder in the customer service and food industry, at café based establishments.

“Employees are scared to speak back to customers who are rude to them; they are scared of repercussions from the company, if they have the protection from the company, it will help ward away customers who come with bad intentions… There is that ‘we can refuse service to anyone’ thing, but that is usually reserved for managers, and if you are just an employee, you can’t really exercise that.”

We are giving employees the ability to immediately refuse service after bad interactions instead of going up the management chain.

Features

• Customer rating system for immediate reporting of customer interactions.

• Optional survey of an employee selected at random for feedback on job experience sent once a week per café.

• All customers are able to use the thank you note feature at the counter, Integrated with the payment and tipping screen.

• Rewards for highly rated customers, given at barista’s discretion.

• SOS button for escalated interaction employee will be relieved and transaction will be nulled with the potential to be declined.