Thoughtworkers travel a lot, and very few are staying full time in the New York Office. Therefore, there needs to be a constant reculturing of new people about the system in place at the office, particularly in regards to washing the dishes and recycling.

Thoughtworkers usually place their dishes in the sink, that ends up filling up so fast, and what often ended up happening was having 3-4 persons that were doing the work on behalf of everyone else. Their previous strategy was to send e-mails anytime the problem escalated, but that was not working.

How could we create an empathy system to have people be aware of who is picking up the slack? Would making the current system visible trigger a behavioral change at work?

After doing research on the general kitchen experience at Thoughtworks, we mapped the interaction flow and proposed our first prototype to test if being watched was a good enough incentive to trigger a change in people's behaviors. Since the "surveillance" technique worked, for the final product, we produced a short movie where we filmed Thoughtworkers' eyes on a small monitor that turned on once an item was placed in the sink. The sink is now always empty.

Qualitative Research

Prototype 1

Problem Mapping

Prototype 2