Scenario
The board of directors of documentary maker Monday Broadcasting have decided to explore the use of a 4 day week in their organisation. Consultants from a large IT company have recommended giving every member of staff a company smart phone, and have offered to provide an application for it that will help staff to manage their own working hours.
The chief executive, Gloria Monday, is unsure how that would work in their organisation, so before going ahead with the project, has asked the in-house design team to do some research to answer two general questions:
- What help would staff need to manage their hours?
- What data would managers need to run the company?
The personnel director, Peccata Monday, is concerned about possible unintended consequences so has asked your team to start the research by doing a User Jeopardy analysis to identify:
- What problems might surface?
- What questions they need to ask to understand these problems?
- Which groups of staff they need to include in the research?
The finance director, Robin Briton, has agreed to the User Jeopardy analysis provided that it take no more than an hour, so has suggested that it start by considering three of the roles in the company:
- Full-time designers
- Part-time researchers
- House keeping staff paid by the hour
His assumption is that these will be representative enough.
Task
1. Discuss who would be affected by a change to a 4 day week. Are the suggested full-time, part-time, and hourly paid groups the right ones?
[5 mins]
2. Discuss how fairness and equity might be lost. What might happen? Who to? Could you prevent it? If it happened, how would you know? What would make it less unfair? What might make it worse?
[10 mins]
3. Discuss what choices might need to be made, and who by.
[5 mins]
4. Discuss how agency might be lost if the design makes a choice hard to make. What might happen? Who to? Could you prevent it? If it happened, how would you know? What might make the choice easier? What might make it harder?
[10 mins]
5. Discuss what data users might need to provide, and how often.
[5 mins]
6. Discuss whether the benefit justifies the data provided, or would it be disproportionate? What questions would help you to know? Who should you be particularly careful to ask?
[10 mins]
7. Discuss who is responsible, and what kind of consent needs to be given.
[5 mins]
8. Discuss how accountability might be lost, or mis-assigned. What might happen? How would you know?
[10 mins]