Project · 2021/222021/22Digital service

Knock

Colleagues see who is free, and where, then knock for a call

Where connections happen

Corporate partner Nestlé Visit website ↗Cohort 2021/22Theme Work & organisations

Key fact: 20+one-hour user interviews
Team: 7 master students
Universities: Hasso Plattner Institute University of Bologna · Almacube
Disciplines: Design · Data Engineering · IT Systems Engineering · International Management · Politics and Economics · Psychology

The project · from brief to prototype

What happened, step by step.

Challenge

Nestlé asked how project teams can keep their value and impact in hybrid work. Remote colleagues are hard to locate and reach, so people wait for answers and lose focus.

What the team learned

Hybrid workers need to feel visible and trusted. Monitoring such as screen sharing was rejected by employees and managers alike, and privacy matters even within one company.

What they built

Knock is an app inside Microsoft Teams. A circle view fed by calendar data shows where colleagues work and their colour-coded availability. Privacy settings control what each colleague sees, and a three-click knock starts an instant call.

How it evolved

Step 1'Big Brother' screen sharing showed that control hurts trust and online guests need active inclusion.
Step 2A holographic office map cluttered space; the map idea worked better as a Teams side panel.
Step 3'Peephole' became Knock because the name sounded like spying; privacy settings followed early tests.

Results

At the SUGAR Expo in San Francisco, feedback was very positive; many visitors said they would use it.
Visitors asked most often for the benefits to be quantified against current tools.

Impact

The team proposed testing Knock in everyday work to measure usage, fewer interruptions and time saved.

Full project text

The team’s original texts from the project page.

A MS Teams app that enables you to achieve a fast and distraction free communication among your colleagues while making everyone from your company visible.

Challenge

In & out the Matrix : How might we redesign the project-team's value and impact when operating in and between the hybrid world?

Giving employees the flexibility to work from home, it becomes more difficult to understand where colleagues are and to reach them as fast as working in the office together.
People rely on calls, text messages or company-wide information that is often badly maintained, hard to find or non-existent. Individually leading to time-consuming pauses waiting for answers and being constantly distracted by notifications resulting in efficiency loss for the company.

Solution

Knock is an application integrated in already existing communication platforms.
The app elaborates existing data like employees’ calendar and individual network connection to visualise colleagues in a simple overview. The visualisation displays their status (available, available if necessary, inaccessible), detailed information on their inaccessibility as well as where they are working. Privacy settings let the user decide with whom to share how many details of the calendar.If the status is available or available if necessary, you are able to start a Knock (a video call with additional information) through three simple clicks.

Impact

Thanks to Knock, employees can work in a focused and respectful environment, knowing who and where to reach colleagues and who not to disturb. They will also have fast and efficient interactions by knocking on virtual doors that enhance collaboration and help to create and maintain a personal network of people.
Studies show that a hybrid workplace increases employee satisfaction, which in turn increases employee retention. Furthermore, the company benefits from an increase in overall productivity due to less wait time and distractions.

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