Amazon A-Z App
In 2018, legal charges were filed against Amazon by former warehouse workers claiming that the stated reason for termination, low productivity rates, was being used as a cover for the employees trying to exercise their legal rights, specifically Secion 8 of the Labor Relations Act (the right to unionize.) Adding to the validity of the claim was the metric that Amazon was using to measure low productivity, a feature of the employee mobile app called “Time off Task.”
This feature reportedly would produce a time measurement for the amount of time a worker was not doing their job, which made employees feel that they could not move away from their task for any reason, for fear of missing a deadline. Adding to the workers' frustrations, the app recorded work activities like meeting with superiors or helping a coworker as “off task.” Workers who don't want to be punished for meeting exact quotas and fear of accruing Time off Task reported avoiding taking bathroom breaks or even in rare cases urinating in bottles. It makes sense that the workers would feel this way.
They were in a situation described by “Parkinson's law”, an observed and measurable reaction that workers have when an exact time is measured when a person is completing a task. Within the app's main Parkinson's law feature, “Time off Task” preyed on certain cognitive biases that play a role in making the workplace uncomfortable. This feature makes a bad working environment for employees, and eliminating it can have positive changes on workers' well being.
How Amazon measured productivity
The “Amazon A-Z” app is used by employees to manage “profile information, submit time off requests, check [schedules], claim extra shifts, see the latest [Amazon] news, and more.”1 It would appear that this app is popular with employees (or at least works without many glitches) from its 4.7 stars on the App store1. That's pretty good when comparing it to other employee apps like “myTime for Target” with 2.7 stars or “Me@Walmart” with an even worse 2.5 star rating. That 4.7 rating is even higher than other popular apps like SnapChat with 3.6 stars and Tinder at 3.7, but that last one is probably due to the fact that I have not downloaded it yet. Amazon has dedicated design and engineering resources with a team that would be fairly responsive to user complaints and debugging the tool.
Employees are required to have this app on their phones. While being a tool for employees, Amazon also uses this app to collect multiple types of data on its employees and their working habits.A One of these data collecting tools was mentioned earlier, a feature called “Time on Tasks”. Amazon employees are required to track their working habits throughout their shift. This amount of time “off-task” was shown to the individual in the app and also reported to the employee’s managers.
By setting a timer for employees, this made workers more observant of their allocation of time when at work. However, without clear guidance on how the time metrics would affect their jobs many employees were confused and frustrated.
Comments on the r/AmazonFC Reddit thread about Time off Task
The unofficial Reddit 5 employee thread is filled with frustrated comments about the confusing nature of the feature. It should be noted Reddit is not a primary or reliable source, and the participants on the r/AmazonFC Reddit thread have not been verified as actual Amazon employees. However, the comments in this thread share the same emotional sentiment as other reported pieces from the Virge and NYT. Thread participants are asking questions about a “certain number of TOT minutes you can accumulate in a day before getting disciplined”, “If I'm currently in "TOT" status, does that impact my rate?” and “If I go to the bathroom, does that impact my rate? My fellow new coworkers all seem nervous to use the bathroom during non-break hours.”
The feeling about the app can be summed up by the comment. “Why does no one fucking explain any of this to new hires? There's so much that's left unexplained”
TOT Operating Principle According to Amazon
While Amazon warehouse employees start their workday, Amazon has each warehouse worker on automatic monitoring with the A-Z app. The TOT machine robotically tracks their productivity throughout the day and could generate any warnings or termination alerts connected to a worker's first-rate work without any formal caution from a supervisor or manager.
However, supervisors at Amazon can override the TOT gadget. Therefore, personnel may not be terminated relying on their lack of productivity.
Amazon "Time off Task." Policy and Utilization of the “Parkinson Law."
Cyril Northcote Parkinson had a very British name and the very British job of British naval historian. His interest in British naval history began in college, where his King’s College PhD thesis on Trade and War in the Eastern Seas, 1803-1810 won the Julian Corbett Prize in Naval History, meaning that this man really liked studying the specifics of the Navy’s tactics and strategies. After university he joined the British military and rose to the rank of lieutenant. After Parkinson left the military, he was able to combine his analytical and historical education with his observations of the military as a large organization and the levels of bureaucracy that arose. Parkinson began writing for a broad audience by naming and measuring common occurrences within business, organizations, or other large bodies. Parkinson began to do research on the naval workforce during the war and postwar Britain. Today he is best known for an observation he titled “Law of Triviality”B and without a care for humility, observations on productivity that were so revolutionary, he had no other choice but to name his theory “Parkinson's Law”.
Cyril Northcote Parkinson with a fancy hat
Parkinson's laws are a wide reflection of the principles of a proper business, the laws of financial literacy, and the reason for successful or unsuccessful life. Parkinson's Law is driven by effort and allocated as the main variables. According to him, more time is required to complete a task when the effort is invested less, and more effort is required when a task needs to be completed in less time.
There is actually a good amount of science behind this science behind this
This principle feels correct to most people who have worked within a large organization, but Parkinson goes into detail on how he figured this out. Parkension measured the number of sailors over a linear timeline. “What we have to note is that the 2000 officials of 1914 had become the 3569 of 1928; and that this growth was unrelated to any possible increase in their work. The Navy during that period had diminished , in point of fact, by a third in men and two-thirds in ships.” Without going into details Parkinson's mathematical calculations, Parkinson states: "In any public administrative department not actually at war the staff increase may be expected to follow this formula"
x=2km+P/n
x – number of new employees to be hired annually
k – number of employees who want to be promoted by hiring new employees
m – number of working hours per person for the preparation of internal memoranda (micropolitics)
P – difference: age at hiring − age at retirement
n – number of administrative files actually completed
Parkinson's success in his mathematical analysis, not only led to his development of a useful equation, it also inspired less deliberately numbers based anyalizone and more sociological study of work structures. Most people can relate to Parkinson’s law as a universal truth, but a number of researchers have continued Parkinson’s scholarly investigation into the topic. In 1991, Genaro J. Gutierrez and Panagiotis Kouvelis published their study “Parkinson's Law and Its Implications for Project Management.” The two researchers compared Parkinson's Law to other project management and project modeling techniques popular at the time. The two researchers contrasted a “Critical Path analysis, which was popular in the 1980’s to plan construction, aerospace, defense, and software projects.”
This method required the use of estimations to calculate times and was often not as precise as stakeholder wanted. The paper found that this was because “the critical path analysis ignores work force behavioral issues, and fails to model behavioral implications about critical and noncritical activity durations that subsequently may cause project delays.” (Gutierrez and Kouvelis p.900) At times, these types of delays could be a result of external factors, but the researches demonstrated that time delays can be a result of work being off task. When the law is discussed in popular culture, is related exclusively to accomplishing a task within a certain time frame, however, when described as a scolocial analysis, is an observation on “the relationship between allocation of effort and goals” (900) When taking this expanded view of the law, it suggests that an individual is able to achieve a goal in a range of timeframes. And when “a loose deadline (i.e. lowering the goal) leads, thus to a decline of the workers performance and to a delay of the activity.”
Gutierrez and Kouvelis also developed a system of equations that,with the appropriate data, could be used to calculate the impact of a worker's growth. “In order to develop a model for activity completion time that is consistent with Parkinson;s Law, we introduce a work expansion term, w, that accounts for leisure time or unnecessary expansion [of the timeframe]”
It is unknown weather Amazon was using any mathematical equations to limit the amount of natural expansion to their workforce, however the use of their personnel tracking software
Bias in Amazon
The implementation of Parkinson's Law during the Amazon A-z App resulted in some levels of biases within the Company. Most of the bias effects were conscious such that all the workers and employees realized them, and their actions were influenced by the application, while others were unconscious. The bias that was experienced in Company can be described as cognitive bias. They mainly occurred out of quick decisions made by the company managers. Some of the factors that influenced the quick decision-making by the administration were; social behaviors, issues with paying attention, recruitment, management, finance, healthcare, and business.
Cognitive biases are repeated systematic errors of thinking that were developed due to misinterpretation of the off-task policy. These biases resulted in irrational judgments that lead to many employees losing their jobs. The bias emerged from the deviation from the normal and common policy system the employees used before.
Types of cognitive bias that were experienced by the users of the Amazon A-Z application;
Anchoring Bias
It refers to heavily relying on the first learned skills and information. It implies the fact that one makes full decisions with full impact from the first specific trait gained. The decision-makers tend to ignore the information received later.
Confirmation Bias
This refers to the tendency of selective observation whereby decision-making is made out of searched backup opinions, and information contradicting the opinion is rejected and dismissed. The humanitarian officials in Amazon made full judgment from their tracking records of the Time off Task". They fully had a fixed belief and opinion that the App was accurate and could not consider any reason that did not match the data in the system. They automatically discounted information that did not favor their perception.
Contrast Effect
This bias occurred when the time allotted, and off-tasks were assessed and compared without regarding their merits and relationship to each other. This bias caused an overlook without considering the reasons for the off-task and the time of an off-task. Contrast effect resulted in exaggeration of positive and negative sides of Amazon A-Z "Time off Task' Policy. The genuine reasons for one to leave their working positions such as a work imbalance, visiting bathrooms and washrooms to answer biological calls, talking to their manager, and a mechanical failure. This bias overlooks such issues and negatively rules out imposing dire consequences to the employees.
Application of Usability Heuristics for Amazon Web Re-design
The amazon 'Take off Task" App is a complex application that would need to be updated, modified and improved as often with the changes in technology. The complexity of Amazon TOT is in the structural function that broadly and largely involves nonlinear workflows of employees in their warehouses. The Tot app is used for important decision making and company judgment, data analysis and modeling. To ensure a more effective system that will be fair, realistic and more accurate, applying heuristics will improve the interface design of the mobile application.
Usually there are 10 heuristics guidelines and standards; Visibility of gadget popularity, healthy between the system and the actual global, user manipulate and freedom, consistency and standards, errors preventions, reputation alternatively that remember, flexibility and performance of use, aesthetic and minimalist design, help person apprehend, diagnose & recover from errors, and help & documentation. These heuristics are broad guidelines of thumb and aren't specific usability suggestions. The following three guidelines are best in enhancing the Amazon TOT interplay net;
● Visibility of system status
● User control and freedom
● Consistency and standards
Visibility of System status
By utilizing the heuristic guidelines, it is important to ensure that any changes to the App keeps the users informed about what is going on. By sending out an appropriate feedback response within a reasonable time. Keeping the workers updated of the current state of the system, using the app to determine their next action. The system plays into their minds their prior interactions and the outcome of their actions. This would automatically trigger the employees' mindset to give the best of their energy and improve their efficiency. The system clearly states to the users the consequences of "action" or "no action".
This guideline would be an improvement to the current system because it would promote positive peer-to-peer interactions that can predict the future interaction of the workers. Predictable interaction would create trust in the brand. This guideline is more practicable as a progressive indicator within the apps feature. A heuristic implementation would be for app to sends a signal on a digital in app map that shows the current location of people, and it helps them understand where next they should go. One example of the indicator is "You Are Here". This indicator would be supported by the geographic information system, and it gives details of users completed steps and remaining steps when the user performs data queries and connections. Another progressive indicator example is "Daily Report'. This indicator expresses how much longer the system expects a given process or task to take place. This message allows the user to make a decision of whether to wait for the process to complete, begin another task or even cancel the previous task within the time indicated on the screen. A generic loop animation is automatically created when the wait command takes more than 10 seconds. The loop animation indicates that the system fails to support the user in making an intended decision.
User control and freedom
In the workspaces and warehouses, users often perform actions that are outside of their direct job. These actions could be meeting, assisting a peer, teaching a peer how to do a task, or personal time (i.e. bathroom breaks, rest periods, ect.) It would be appropriate to have a clearly made “alternate task” option that would undo the unwanted and unintended TOT action without having to go through an extended process. Having an easier way for employees to correct, undo unwanted TOT action, their confidence and freedom would be fostered. The “alternate task” would give the employees the chance to be controllers of the system and will keep them away from frustrations and getting stuck in unexplainable fixes. The “alternate task” command should have a clear way of the "undo" and "redo" action, for instance a Cancel button –to quit a process that involved multiple steps, Back Button -- to redirect the user back to the previous record/state/screen, Undo Button – to regress the former state. The “alternate task” should be clearly labeled and positioned in discoverable points within the app. Just like in the physical space when an individual worker's job could change instantly, the “alternate task” should be quickly available in the digital space.
This heuristic guideline would be more of an advantage, especially to the new people or infrequent users of the company system. The option will quickly. This would be a fair mechanism of allowing them to learn without suffering consequences.
Consistency and standards
TheA-Z app should have a conventional and a constant platform that is understood by every worker and employee in the company. The meaning and interpretation of words, actions and situations should be the same. According to "Jakob’s" Law, people spend most of their time on the internet and with digital products. Their repeated use and experience with those products set their expectations. The system in the working place should at least align closely to the common digital products that they are exposed to. Failing to have consistency might mean they are forced to learn something new which would increase the user's cognitive load. Having standards would enable the Amazon community to establish company conventions. The maintenance of both internal and external consistencies is the increased learnability by all workers regardless of ranks in the workforce.
The Company'sCompany's brand or products are related to internal consistency. This is achievable when interactive components operate and work within a common goal, visuality and lingual throughout.
Practically the heuristic can be achieved in many ways. For example, locating an IT help counter at the entrance of the company premises and in strategic locations around the building, such consistency would meet the expectation of workers..
How Parkinson's law was implemented incorrectly
In a company wide memo, Amazon’s Dave Clark who at the time was CEO Worldwide Consumer, addressed the Time off Task feature in the Amazon A-Z app.
“The first update I want to give you today is to a policy called Time off Task. If you’re not familiar with it, this policy is a way to measure the amount of time employees are logged on to the software tools in their work area, and it’s something that’s been in place in one form or another since our earliest days. It’s also similar to policies that you’d find at many logistics and manufacturing facilities.
Time off Task can easily be misunderstood. The primary goal of the Time off Task metric is to understand whether there are issues with the tools that people use to be productive, and only secondarily to identify under-performing employees. There are many legitimate reasons why employees log off their software tools—talking to their manager, a process issue, a work imbalance, a mechanical failure, and many more. Seeing that an employee is not logged on to the software tools for long periods of time (typically more than half an hour) is a good indicator of operational systemic defects, and it prompts managers to engage with an employee in an effort to understand what barriers the employee is facing so they can be fixed.
Starting today, we’re now averaging Time off Task over a longer period to ensure that there’s more signal and less noise—reinforcing the original intent of the program, and focusing Time off Task conversations on how we can help. The goal is to refocus the conversations on instances where there are likely true operational issues to resolve. We believe this change will help ensure the Time off Task policy is used in the way it was intended.”
From either a combination of bad press or a realization of a flawed design, the Amazon management felt it was appropriate to address the workforce that had to use the TOT feature. They acknowledged how the company failed, and thus the design of the feature, failed to be clearly understood by the users. It can be assumed that workers felt some relief that the company was redesigning this feature.
Recommendation
Each largely used workplace app like Amazons are exposed to interface –design challenges which are all unique within their complex applications and apps. It is important that designers and researchers greatly put into consideration Jakob Nelsen’s heuristics. These heuristics when applied within an investment are likely to create several positive effects within a companies wed structure.
Some of the advantages of integrating these guideline to the app interface are;
1. The application becomes generalized and easy for the users to handle. The control of the system becomes shared among subordinates. This in return uplift the confidence and accountability of every user and worker that users the system.
2. The usability of the App would increase. Consistency factor that is emphasized by the heuristics will enable the users to freely interact and relate among themselves, within the app and with the system of application.
3. Increased learnability. A flexible application would enable the casual users, new users and the infrequent users to learn without adhering to dire consequences.
4. The Pomodoro Technique. The re-design could utilize an “opt-in” timer, similar to the other self timing apps available on this app store. This self time to increase productivity is referred to as the pomodoro technique.
Conclusion
Going back to Parkeinson’s observations, he saw that within any organization there is waste, but it should be up to the management to create a better work environment, designed for the location and work, but not force it on individual employees to make the business as a whole more productive. A mobile applications UX design can only be considered efficient if it meets both the company and user requirements. An application like Amazon A-Z, needs to be used in more than one setting, and be able to be used easily by different types of employees with varying technological literacy. Additionally, a “good” version of the app would be to perform similar functions under different situations. Humanitarian factors should be a consideration to put into place before such applications are made. These factors also influence the features and characteristics of these applications. A unified and favorable application is one that balances the function of the company with the employees wellbeing and status.
Footnotes
A)Props to the Amazon employee with enough the patiences to sift through the terms of service request on this app to see that by downloading the Amazon A-Z app, Amazon forces employees to consent to the company gathering data from your phone that is outside the app. There are multiple low ratings on the Apple App Store1 with employees objecting to this, but downloading it anyways as a requirement for their employment.
B) The Law of triviality is painfully known by any designer who has had to work on a project with multiple, non-designer stakeholders. The Law states that “ people within an organization commonly or typically give disproportionate weight to trivial issues." Common examples of this in my professional design role include clients complaining about changing the font from 17pt to 18pt, and then asking all members of a team to weigh in, then not having enough time to review the actual content of the words in question.