BTogether

  • An IoT workplace ecosystem for BT: wellbeing, collaboration and recognition in one experience
  • Led a 5-person cross-disciplinary team on an industry contract
  • Won the BT Innovation Award
Role
UX Lead & Team Lead
Timeframe
6 months
Context
Industry contract with BT
Tools
Figma · Miro · Axure · Arduino · Onion Omega 2 · Wio Link · SPSS
The BTogether ecosystem in a BT office: desk pet, ambient screen and app

Visuals adapted to protect BT's IP.

5
Person cross-disciplinary team led
5
Connected touchpoints in one ecosystem
34
Research participants in a proxy study
1st
BT Innovation Award winner
01 · Context

The sensors made people feel watched.

  • BT renovated an office full of sensors to understand how people worked.
  • Employees felt tracked, not supported. The sensors created the opposite of what BT intended.
  • The task: reframe the sensors as wellbeing, not surveillance.

It must feel voluntary

  • Not monitored
  • Opt-in at every step

It must motivate

  • Surface data to encourage
  • Never to shame

It must connect people

  • Real social connections
  • Not just notifications

These three criteria filtered every design decision. I chose Design for Behaviour Change (BJ Fogg's model and COM-B) as the method.

02 · Research

No access to BT employees. So I built a proxy.

  • BT couldn't give us access to its staff.
  • I mapped university departments to BT's structure: open-plan teams, silos, managers and junior staff.
  • We recruited 34 participants, ran them through scripted BT scenarios, and tested every insight against secondary research.
University departmentsOpen-plan teams · siloed groups · managers · junior staff
Mapped to BT's workplaceSame structure, same pressures, scripted BT scenarios
01

Ethnographic observation

3 days · 4 departments

People cluster by team and rarely cross invisible floor boundaries.

02

Day in the life

12 participants · 30-minute intervals

Afternoon energy drops were universal, with no way to act on them together.

03

Scenario acting

Scripted BT workplace moments

Under pressure, people default to avoidance, not collaboration.

04

Co-design workshops

3 sessions · card sorting · SCAMPER

Participants chose team-level visibility over individual monitoring.

05

Behavioural mapping

Movement, hotspots, isolation zones

The most social moments happen at thresholds and corridors, not desks.

06

Semi-structured interviews

18 participants · 40 minutes

"I'd use it if my manager can't see it" came up in 14 of 18, unprompted.

07

Secondary research

14 academic papers

Delayed rewards break the feedback loop. Recognition must be immediate.

08

SPSS analysis

34 participants · correlation testing

Moving more and talking more were significantly correlated.

What the research revealed

"I've worked next to the same person for a year. I still don't know what they're good at."

Social architectureCreate opt-in discovery.

"I know I should drink more water. Telling me I haven't done it doesn't help."

Data without contextTeam visibility, not personal surveillance.

"I'd use a health tracker at work, but only if my manager can't see it."

The visibility paradoxAggregate team data only.

"The office lighting is the same at 9am and 6pm. It doesn't help either."

Lighting and moodIoT-responsive lighting states.

"We got a pizza once, three months after the project. Nobody connected it to anything."

Reward timingImmediate, tangible team rewards.

"I've muted every notification on my phone. But I notice when my plant needs water."

Objects over notificationsEmbodied, ambient data objects.

Three archetypes. One ecosystem.

The Siloed Expert
The Siloed Expert

"I'm deeply skilled but I work alone. Nobody knows what I'm good at."

  • Invisible to colleagues
  • Low sense of belonging

Needs

  • Twins matching and interest discovery
The Burned-Out Collaborator
The Burned-Out Collaborator

"I'm in meetings all day. I know I should move more, but there's no time."

  • Over-connected, under-fulfilled
  • Poor wellbeing habits

Needs

  • BiT nudges and ambient wellbeing cues
The Reluctant Manager
The Reluctant Manager

"I want my team to thrive, but I can't see how they're doing until something breaks."

  • No real-time team view
  • Fears being seen as surveillance

Needs

  • Aggregate team data, no individual exposure
03 · Deciding what to build

11 concepts. 3 advanced.

  • Every concept was scored against criteria drawn from the research.
  • The team scored independently first, so the most evidence, not the loudest voice, won.
ConceptUser impact ×3Feasibility ×2Ethical risk ×2(inverse)Strategic fit ×1ScoreDecision
IoT ambient lighting (BiT)545538Built
Collaborative ambient screens545437Built
Social matching app (Twins)534534Built
Individual biometric dashboard432325Dropped
Manager performance tracker341221Dropped
Facial recognition mood detection331219Rejected
The ethical call.I dropped the biometric dashboard, manager tracker and facial recognition, even though two were popular with the team.
04 · The ecosystem

One ecosystem. Five touchpoints.

  • Not an app: a connected system where each touchpoint reinforces the others.
  • App · BT Pet (BiT) · Ambient screens · Interactive hub · Collaborative lighting.
BTOGETHER Ecosystem Hub Data Layer 🖥 Ambient Screens Team data · Environment · Wellbeing 📱 BTogether App Profile · Social · Ranking · Twins 🌐 BT Pet (BiT) IoT desk object · Ambient colour state 🤝 Interactive Hub Project board · Knowledge sharing 💡 Collaborative Lighting IoT-responsive · Focus/Interact/Collaborate FOUR PILLARS 🤲 Collaboration 💚 Wellbeing 🌱 Environment 🏆 Recognition

Privacy built into the data flow

  • Sensors feed one processing layer. Individual data never reaches shared surfaces.
IoT DATA ARCHITECTURE — BTogether SENSORS 👣 Footfall PIR + floor pressure 💳 RFID Check-in Card tap · identity 💧 Water Meter Flow rate sensor ⚡ Energy Meter kWh consumption 🌬️ Air Quality CO₂, temp, humidity 📱 App Self-report Steps · hydration log 💡 Lighting State Mode · occupancy PROCESSING 🖥️ Onion Omega 2 Edge compute · data aggregation Ingest + Normalise Raw sensor → structured data Score Engine Individual → team aggregate score Privacy Filter Anonymise · team-only output State Engine Trigger lighting · BiT · screen modes Wio Link Controller IoT device output commands Push to App API Real-time sync to mobile OUTPUTS 🖥 Ambient Screens Environment data · team scores 🌐 BiT Pet (IoT) Ambient colour state · desk object 💡 Adaptive Lighting Focus / Interact / Collaborate 📱 BTogether App Profile · Twins · Team · Ranking 🤝 Interactive Hub Project board · knowledge sharing EXPERIENCE Awareness Team energy & environment visible without effort Ambient Nudge No notification · no guilt Peripheral colour cue only Spatial Signal Room mode readable from the corridor Voluntary Action Employee chooses to check connect, compete, discover Belonging Cross-team connections form. Anxiety becomes engagement. PRIVACY 🔒 No individual data to managers Team aggregates only on shared surfaces Individual data visible only to the employee via personal app Opt-in at every layer Participation is always voluntary GDPR by design Data minimisation at architecture level

A day in the life, arrival to recognition

  • Each touchpoint hands off to the next across the working day.
Arrive at desk
Mid-morning
Lunchtime
Afternoon
End of day
Employee
Opens laptop, phone on desk
Deep work, sedentary, water ignored
Eats at desk, checks social feed
Collaboration request arrives
Logs off
Pain point
No sense of team energy
No prompt to move without nagging
Eats alone, doesn't know who's nearby
Collaboration feels like interruption
No visible team achievement
Touchpoint
BiT glows green: team active
BiT fades orange: a nudge, not a notification
App surfaces a Twins match nearby
Hub invite; lighting shifts to Collaborate
Ambient screen celebrates the team

The room knows when you arrive

  • Tap an RFID card and the room's lighting shows the mode of work, without a word.
Collaborative lighting in three states: Focus, Interact, Collaborate

1 · Focus

  • Neutral white light
  • One person, deep work

2 · Interact

  • Red and blue split light
  • A second person enters: an invitation to connect

3 · Collaborate

  • Lighting warms
  • Visible from outside the room

A room glowing in Collaborate mode creates curiosity. Social states became visible with no app and no notification.

05 · Design

Built to validate the concept

  • The app was designed in Figma. The ambient screens ran live during the BT pitch.

The BTogether app

Profile and wellbeing dashboard
Profile and wellbeing
Twins interest-based matching
Twins: interest matching
Team view with aggregate data only
Team: aggregate only
Weekly team rankings
Rankings: weekly competition
Try the interactive prototype

Ambient wall screens

  • Data becomes landscape: green is good, red means act now.
Environment screens: green mountains for low use, red for high use, and air quality
#BTgoesgreen 13:00 Green is the new black. Good job! ⚡ 20% 🚰 26% BT TOGETHER
Energy and water: low consumption day
#BTmoves 13:30 Being active increases focus 80% Activity 👤 👤 👤
Activity: team at 80%
BTOGETHER 13:00 Team Points Team 1 290 Team 2 180 Team 3 124 Team 4 101 🤝 💧 🏃 🌱 💪 Collab Water Activity Environ Wellbeing
Team leaderboard: five scoring dimensions

Turning anxiety into belonging

  • I visited a BT facility to see how the space shaped how people felt about being tracked.
  • When monitoring felt personal, people shut down. When it felt collective and playful, they leaned in.

Before

  • "Why are there sensors tracking where I sit?"
  • "I don't want my activity data going to my manager."
  • "I'll just avoid the rooms with the tech."

After

  • "Our BiT turned green! We beat Floor 3 this week."
  • "I met someone from engineering through Twins."
  • "We got a 3D-printed award. It's still on my desk."

The technology didn't change. The frame around it did.

BJ Fogg's behaviour model, applied

Motivation

  • Team competition and 3D-printed rewards
  • Opt-in, with no management pressure

Ability

  • RFID tap-in, passive sensing
  • Ambient screens need zero interaction

Prompt

  • BiT dims orange when activity drops
  • No notifications, no guilt

Storyboard: one tap changes the room

01 · ArriveSarah walks in, RFID card in hand.
BT
02 · TapShe taps in. Check-in registered.
03 · FocusNeutral white light. Her BiT glows.
👋
04 · InteractMarcus from Team 3 taps in. Red and blue split light.
T2 T3 Cross-team +10pts +10 pts!
05 · CollaborateCross-team work: +10 points. The light warms.
TODAY'S TEAMS T2 180 T3 290 T4 101 🏆
06 · CelebrateTeam scores on the ambient screen. No individual data.

Four decisions that shaped it

01

A physical object over app notifications

Notification fatigue was universal. A desk object that changes colour communicates without demanding attention.

02

Team data, not individual data

Shared screens show team aggregates only; personal data stays in the employee's app. Willingness to participate rose ~40% in prototype testing.

03

Interest-based matching

Twins was almost cut as too social. Research said silos come from not knowing what colleagues care about. 8 of 12 participants said they'd use it.

04

3D-printed team rewards

A unique object shaped by the team's own data. Immediate, tangible recognition that digital badges can't match.

06 · Leadership and outcome

Leading a team without a brief

  1. W1

    Research before design

    • I held a 2-week research-first period. The team was frustrated; the insights justified it.
  2. W3

    Structured divergence, then convergence

    • SCAMPER to generate, decision matrices to converge. Quieter voices got a structured say.
  3. W5

    Dropped three concepts on ethical grounds

    • Uncomfortable, but backed by the research.
  4. W9

    Split by skillset, kept one system

    • Each person owned a touchpoint. Weekly integration sessions kept data, visuals and interactions consistent.
  5. W14

    Presented to BT and won the Innovation Award

    • Against internal BT teams with far greater resources.

BT Innovation Award

Judges cited the research method and the systems thinking across touchpoints.

~40% more willing

Team-only data raised willingness to participate in prototype testing.

8 of 12 would use Twins

Validated in prototype testing.

What it taught me

Research first, always. Constraints are design prompts. And the most important decisions are often about what not to build.

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