“Another generic birthday email,” sighed Deanna as she opened her inbox. “I wish there was something more personal, more heartfelt.” Her colleague Greg agreed. “Remember last month? It was my fifth-year work anniversary, and all I got was a generic mail. Plus, I hear it took forever to gather everyone’s messages and put them together. There should be something that actually feels special and doesn’t take so much effort to put together.” 

This dialogue captures a common frustration in today’s workplace: the lack of personal, meaningful acknowledgment, coupled with the logistical task of manually gathering messages to celebrate a milestone.  

As companies navigate remote and hybrid work environments, fostering genuine connections has become increasingly challenging. The solution lies in leveraging human-centric design thinking and technology to develop a web-based employee engagement platform that transforms ordinary work anniversaries, birthdays, milestones, and other special occasions into personalized, memorable experiences. 

The power of Human-Centric Design to drive adoption of technology 

Human-centric design thinking begins with empathy, placing the user at the core of the development process. This approach goes beyond addressing functional needs—it delves into the emotions, motivations, and desires of users. When we began designing an employee engagement platform for our client, a multinational CPG corporation, we first gathered real-world stories from employees across the client organization. A recurring theme emerged: employees crave genuine recognition and personal interactions that are more than just superficial, and they need a simpler, more efficient way to organize these recognitions or events. 

Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”  

To harness the power of design while leveraging the technological components to bring it to life, Fractal’s Experience, Consulting, and Cloud Tech (CDT) teams got together to deliver a platform that is both beautiful and highly functional, addressing the real underlying user needs. 

From understanding human behavior to designing solutions 

Effective solution design stems from a deep understanding of user behavior. This begins with observing and empathizing with users in their natural environments, identifying their pain points, and uncovering their latent needs. By engaging with employees and listening to their stories, we discovered that many felt disconnected and undervalued, particularly during remote work. This insight shaped our design process, leading us to create a solution that prioritizes personalization and ease of use. 

By adopting this empathetic mindset, we moved from merely identifying user challenges and features to crafting meaningful, intuitive solutions that address these challenges head-on.

The platform that we developed aims to revolutionize how we celebrate and connect, while also simplifying the process. Imagine this: It’s Deanna’s fifth work anniversary. Instead of a forgettable email that took hours to compile, her team collaborates on a vibrant online board filled with heartfelt messages, nostalgic videos, and shared memories. It’s fun, easy, convenient and most of all, engaging for all involved! 

Core features driving engagement with adoption driven through ease of use 

Successful adoption is critical for the longevity of any platform, especially one rooted in human-centric design. Here’s how we ensure our employee engagement platform becomes an indispensable part of our client’s organizational culture:

1. Customizable celebration boards: Through our use of Microsoft Azure Data Factory and Azure SQL tables to develop a foundational structure to host the solution, the technical architecture was built to support a large number of concurrent users. Each occasion—whether a birthday, work anniversary, or retirement was designed to get a unique board. These boards are visually stunning and fully customizable, reflecting the personality and preferences of the individual being celebrated.

Harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, we constructed a highly scalable and resilient architecture using Azure App Service to host the solution on Azure Web Apps. This setup is designed to seamlessly support a vast number of concurrent users, ensuring optimal performance at any scale. Each occasion—whether a birthday, work anniversary, or retirement—generates a unique, beautifully crafted board. These boards are fully customizable, tailored to capture the individual’s personality and preferences in a visually stunning way. 

On the backend, we’ve deployed Azure’s PostgreSQL for reliable, high-performance data storage, while Azure Blob Storage securely handles all images and videos uploaded by users. This combination ensures unmatched scalability, data integrity, and performance, leveraging the full power of the Azure ecosystem to deliver an exceptional user experience.

2. Rich interactive content: Through an interactive web app developed in ReactJS, users can upload photos, videos, memes and gifs, making each board lively and engaging we integrated powerful cloud components such as Azure Blob Storage for reliable media storage and Azure Key Vault to safeguard sensitive data with top-tier security protocols. These features ensure that every interactive element is safely managed, allowing the person being celebrated to feel truly special and valued.

3. Collaborative contributions: The platform fosters teamwork by allowing colleagues to contribute to the boards, comment on posts, and react with emojis. This collaborative environment helps foster a sense of community and shared celebration, without the hassle of manually gathering inputs.

4. User-friendly interface: With simplicity at its core, the platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their tech proficiency, can participate and enjoy.

5. Unbridled creativity through tech: While the platform is built to celebrate milestones and careers – the users find new ways to leverage the tech – using it as mood boards, to take collaborative notes, and even to share messages of bereavement.  

By focusing on the human element, we make the adoption process not only possible but enjoyable, ensuring long-term engagement and satisfaction. 

Creating a narrative of belonging 

Our ultimate goal is to weave a narrative of connection, recognition, and appreciation throughout the organization. By harnessing human-centric design thinking with tech, we’ve developed a platform that not only acknowledges achievements but celebrates the individuals behind them. This approach cultivates a culture of belonging and recognition, driving employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. 

Building an employee engagement platform rooted in human-centric design thinking is more than a technical challenge; it’s a mission to reshape workplace culture. By focusing on the human element and ensuring seamless adoption, our platform stands out as a vital tool for fostering genuine connections and celebrating milestones in a meaningful way.  

Through the use of design and tech, our platform brings the human touch back to the workplace, redefining what it means to engage and appreciate your team, while having some fun! 

Discover how we delivered a design-led web-based platform for a major CPG firm, transforming employee engagement within their organization. Check out the full case study here. 

At Fractal, we specialize in creating innovative solutions tailored to the unique needs of organizations. If your company is still manually managing milestone celebrations, which can be time-consuming and mundane, we’re here to help. Contact us to learn more about how we can support your goals and transform your workplace.