ING
The Workplace Accommodations App makes it easy for employees to reserve the ideal desk at ING's flexible workspaces. The app is designed with employees with disabilities in mind, by integrating the option to reserve assistive tools for the associated disability.
Assignment
At ING, the morning is rarely smooth sailing for employees with disabilities. Flexible and limited workspaces means that employees have to sit at different desks every day. This forces these employees to have to reinstall their accessibility tools every morning, using a significant part of their day in the process. How can we help these employees?
ENDPRODUCT
Through the Workplace Accommodations App, employees with a disability can reserve a desk and assistive tools ahead of time. Through a personal profile saving their requirements, reservations can be made in a few clicks. All the user has to do, is scan their QR-code to claim their desk.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
As a researcher, I combine empathetic fieldwork with structured methods to design inclusive solutions. For example, we visited KunstExpress Barendrecht, a studio offering guided support for people with disabilities, where we conducted interviews and fly-on-the-wall observations to gain insights into the working conditions of people with disabilities.
During interviews at KunstExpress and the South Holland Provincial Government building, I applied laddering techniques to uncover the user's core needs. Through desk research, I contribute by providing insights into target-adjusted visual and literary language for our endproduct.
NO GOOD IDEAS WITHOUT CREATIVITY
By carefully clustering our insights in an affinity diagram, we’re able to turn complex information into clear core problems. From there, we translate these insights into short and powerful design principles like ‘empowerment’ and ‘effortless’, which serve as guiding values throughout the design process.
I strongly believe that creativity can't truly go to work with technical limitations, so we used the Crazy-8 session to let our imagination run wild. This leads to innovative ideas that go beyond standard app-based solutions. We then translate these ideas into concrete, realistic concepts, using methods such as Concept Solution Sketches.
