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Design & research

Current implementation: The dated 3D calendar and native Garmin app now share a protected Redis-backed server. Earlier phone/scenario sections below are design history. The focus on reflection remains a proposed direction; no worker outcome is established. See Watch and reflection.

The moment we are designing for

An extra shift arrives. Before replying, a student weighs their body, coursework, rent, travel and a manager they may feel guilty disappointing. Offshift makes those trade-offs legible and helps with the words, while leaving the decision with the worker.

The design evidence comes from five semi-structured interviews with university students in casual work in Brisbane. Participant IDs P1–P5 are used in the full research document.

Meet Dinda

Dinda Pratiwi is a composite persona: a 21-year-old international undergraduate balancing retail shifts, study, essential expenses and personal commitments. The scenario's names, managers, workplace details and dollar figures are illustrative.

Needs	Design response
Cover essentials without accepting every offer automatically.	Money in plain language, including what is already earned and booked.
Protect study, friends and recovery time.	Classes, plans, travel and rest in one visible week.
Say no honestly without rehearsing for ten minutes.	Editable reply drafts with Warm and Plain tones.
Feel that either answer is acceptable.	Equal standing for all five response options.
Keep bodily and emotional notes out of workplace decisions.	A worker-centred design; manager screens simulate roster and messages.

Four Pleasures

Lens	What it contributes
Physio	Travel gaps, close shifts and recovery rituals.
Socio	Reply wording, negotiation and staying connected with colleagues.
Psycho — primary lens	Less mental rehearsal, clearer trade-offs and ownership of the decision.
Ideo	Honesty, personal priorities and care without surveillance.

The primary lens is psycho-pleasure: the hardest moment is cognitive and emotional, in the gap between receiving an offer and replying. The detailed mapping and references are in the Pleasure Framework iteration.

Design commitments

• Show the trade-offs without a verdict, score or recommended answer.
• Treat rest as a commitment, rather than whatever time happens to remain.
• Let Health, Uni or Money priorities change the order of checks.
• Keep reply drafts editable and make the response deliberate.
• Provide touch and keyboard alternatives to gestures and voice.

[!IMPORTANT] These are design commitments, not a production security guarantee. The demo uses shared state endpoints without authentication. The optional hosted assistant receives scenario context. Use fictional data until access controls, isolation and privacy handling are implemented and reviewed.

Evaluate the experience

Participant task	What to observe
Jess asks you to cover tonight. Decide and reply.	Which checks are read? Is the draft edited? Does the participant feel it was their call?
You have finished a close. Complete a check-in.	Are Fine / Tired / Wiped comfortable choices? Does the recovery kit feel personal?
Set this month's priority, then find who can see it.	Are the privacy boundaries understandable and believable?

Record task time, whether they would send the message as written, a 1–5 rating for “It felt like my call”, and an open response about anything that felt like being watched. These are proposed evaluation measures; the repository does not establish outcomes from a completed study.

Next: See how the design becomes code.