Wei Huang

Co-creating future jobs that bridge the gap between emerging talent and transforming enterprises

SHIFT HAPPENS is a medium that co-creates future jobs with emerging talent and companies. Our main goal is to create and bring more human values into future jobs by removing the difficulties of the old-fashioned job-hunting into something more mutually respectable whilst eliminating historical biases during the recruitment process. Making it fairer, reducing inequalities and encouraging a transparent process fit for the needs of the business in the transformation phase and emerging talents.

1. How might we help the hiring managers from a transforming SME to better understand and acquire the most-needed emerging talent?

2. How might we empower future talent to progress in their career by demystifying their capabilities and job roles?

Our service solution aims to provide a value-driven job platform to grow with the skills one has rather than fit into predetermined criteria that no longer align with an organisation. It benefits people and organisations by supporting newfound transdisciplinary skills to kill the less effective 2-dimensional recruitment process and pushing for a human purpose-driven co-created process.

Vision is an end-to-end service that helps people effectively manage their savings and start making early investments to build a financially sustainable future. It provides users with the necessary tools and information while facilitating an aided behavioural change to make better financial decisions.

Background and Research: We started with extensive exploratory research to understand UK residents’ needs & priorities, and controllable & uncontrollable factors around their spending. We targeted people aged 25-30, who are more likely to be nudged by behavioural changes as they just started earning a regular income with fewer considerations on finance management and are vulnerable to the uncertainties on the government’s financial support post-retirement. We took the extreme user approach to learn from extreme user behaviours to identify opportunities and elements that lead to sustainable financial status.

The Challenge: The ‘Intense Savers’ neglect the possibility of investing their cash savings as they find the investment options to be abstract and intimidating. Taking inspiration from Fogg's behaviour model, we observed our users need to overcome the behavioural barriers in motivation and capability to start making investment decisions. The users have to undergo a strong realisation of the need to start making investments to make them consider it and start learning from that point. If they are made to realise that self-research was the only option, they might miss important information and the underlying risks - and end up making wrong un-informed decisions leading to losses. Hence it is important that we take them through a journey that educates them with all the necessary information and the risk factors involved and builds confidence to start investing.

Statement Section: How might we make the ‘Intense Savers’ realise the potential long-term benefits of making investments, and help them build knowledge and confidence to start investing?

Our Service - Vision: We introduce Vision, which is a service that shifts users’ mindsets to understand the need for investment and enables them with the necessary tools and information to start making investments. There are three values which make Vision service unique- First, it integrates scattered resources together to deliver a cohesive and informed user experience. Second, it breaks down complexity in information, providing focus, clarity and ease of understanding. Lastly, it is easy to implement within existing financial service environments.

Service Implementation: The service is most effective if integrated with banks, we investigated what value it brings to high street and online banks in providing this service to bring the resources together to provide a cohesive experience. The main core of our service is to optimize and integrate the massive resources and build up the bridge to successfully help them to make better decisions.

Pausible, is a systematic service that collaborated with NHSx and helps you manage your unhealthy craving and improve your lifestyle choices.

The key challenge: We realized through user surveys and clinical research that binge eating is a vicious cycle of eating and regretting that can quickly spiral into a severe eating disorder if left untreated. It is easily triggered by internal and external stimuli, it becomes an escape mechanism to manage emotions of discomfort and stress. Since cravings are separate from hunger and are specific learned behaviours, our focus is on the early prevention stages.

The Service Concept and Value Proposition: Our entire concept is based on the 90-second framework that was put together by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor who scientifically evidenced that, at the time of an urge it takes only 90 seconds for our brain to convert unconscious decisions into positive responses. We have adopted this theory to design the pause in a way that works as a nudge to convert environmental, social, and physiological triggers into positive actions and responses. We have used cognitive behaviour therapy to design activities that build resilience, self-awareness, and confidence and find better ways to manage their life stresses. Our core value proposition is to help people who struggle to control their unhealthy food cravings by reducing impulsive behaviour and enabling conscious decision-making such that does not become a lifestyle limitation.

Service Development and Prototype: Our digital and physical touchpoints work together to complete the Pausible ecosystem. While the application stores and analyses data for provides insight, the physical touchpoints such as stickers, and storage boxes work as reflective nudges and reminders at the time of the trigger. Our service was developed through iteration and 5 rounds of assumption testing, prototyping, and validation. We did clinical validation with KCL Eating disorder Research Group for testing the 90-second pause, 2 times co-creation workshops with our target users for activities, Also test in different ways for our features, and activities and testing the effectiveness of our physical touchpoints. Based on feedback, to mitigate the risks of overexposure to mobile technologies and notifications we created physical touchpoints to create more meaningful offline connections with the service. These act as geofences to identify risky areas, like Tesco or your Kitchen Larder, where you’re more likely to binge. And also smart snacking boxes that align with your goals.