As a low-threshold instrument to gather feedback and stimulate a team to reflect on their working practices, we ask them to send us their opinion by SMS. For instance, in order to stimulate reflection on the effectiveness of their meetings, we place little cards in their meeting room with: “How effective was the meeting you just had?”.After a person has send her opinion, she receives an SMS back with the statistics of how her colleagues voted for this. Additionally, we calculate the daily averages and present them in a playful way as a weather report on centrally located screens. A second images illustrates the trend over the last days by showing a picture of a season with a haiku projected over it. This trend image can for instance help us to see whether a specific intervention helped to make meetings more effective. We are starting a test within the Telematica Instituut to see whether people like this instrument, if it raises curiousity, and whether it helps as a means to stimulate reflection. From March on, we will do a test with one of the companies in Future Workspaces. 

Instant gratification

As an extra incentive for people to send an SMS, we send them an instant response back via SMS. This response shows the daily statistics and can even be accompanied by a “tip of the day”, related to the topic at hand. Such a response provides instant gratification and confirms to the sender that her vote has been processed.

Playful illustration

Based on the votes received, we calculate daily averages and plot those as a weather report. Instead of just presenting numerical values, we intentionally have chosen for a somewhat playful illustration. Our expectation is that this playfulness helps the respondents not to consider the feedback as offensive or patronising, but rather as a means to gain insight in how they feel about the topic at hand.

Design

Tips and tricks

• Store the SMS number in the phones of the team members; alternatively, if you have their mobile numbers, send them an SMS from the number, with a message to store the number.
• Put coloured note cards with the SMS number and the question at the locations where you want people to SMS. So, in case of a question about the effectiness of meetings, make sure their are note cards in the meeting rooms.
• Regularly publish the images also by e-mail or via their Intranet, apart from continually displaying results on centrally located screens
• Use digital photoframes to display results in smaller rooms. We use the Vodafone 520, as this photoframe allows us to update the image via MMS, even in a secure environment.

Tags: sms, text messaging, tools

Dit item is geplaatst door external author op 23 December 2008 om 17:18 in EN, instruments, knowledge base. Je kunt een reactie achterlaten, of een trackback op je eigen website opnemen.