Background

Meeting culture is a cornerstone of company culture. How might we use objective data to drive meeting culture towards more inclusivity and effective communication? People are often unaware of how they show up in meetings. Communication dynamics are fuzzy, people feel uncomfortable bringing up micro-aggressions and small critiques, but when they happen on a consistent or regular basis it can affect company culture, team morale, and turnover. We can use data to surface meeting communication patterns and suggest actionable improvements.

User Stories

As the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leader of a company investing in culture, I want to understand the communication patterns in meetings with objective data so I can make tactical and measurable improvements.

Process

We conducted user research with 8 team leads and DEI leaders to understand the problem space and discover key needs. I designed and built a prototype to test with our target audience, and collaborated with the team on product strategy, direction and building an MVP. We ran a pilot program with 3 companies to assess product-market fit and gather feedback.

Through our research learnings, we continuously iterated on the product - introducing supporting research evidence for insights, custom chart designs. more personalized surveys, meeting sentiment analysis, clearer calls to action, and reports that showed changes over time.

Trust is key - show your work
Trust is important for sensitive topics such as communication and inclusion - showing evidence and analysis methodology helps users feel more comfortable with the data.

A well-designed graph is worth a thousand words
Graphs needed to tell a story within a few seconds of observation. Some of our graphs needed supporting text to communicate the message.
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There’s no one size fits all approach to team demographics
Every organization had different demographics that they were interested in tracking - we needed to allow for more flexibility and customization in our intake survey.

Insights need to feel clear, actionable, and measurable
t was important to make the insights feel actionable, with a clear next step for improvement. Tracking progress over time is also important to feeling like meaningful progress is being made.

Key Insights