“James… we didn’t move our OKR to completion fifth time in a row. Any idea why?”

“Well… the market is unpredictable, and we had unforeseen hurdles,” — answered James over the zoom call as a knee jerk reaction. Unfortunately for everybody, the real reason was stuck deep down in his throat. He didn’t dare to explain it because there’s no safe environment in his team.

James felt overwhelmed by personal matters, exhausted by the constant marathon at work, guilty for not delivering. Afraid to ask for help. Not long ago, he even started daydreaming about quitting. Nobody will understand that, and the blame will fall on “unforeseen hurdles and unpredictable market.” Only if they knew more about his emotions…

There are numerous studies about why emotions matter at our organizations. Then why it’s so hard to integrate some form of mindfulness into our daily work if it’s so important? Everybody is doing it personally — some with jogging or exercises, others with yoga or meditation. The human is a collective specie, which means we must have some way to collaborate on a deeper vibe? Maybe by communicating in an emotionally intelligent way? We started to ask ourselves such questions, and we realized that others are asking too!

There was a whole universe of questions. How can remote teams harmonize their feelings? Why a group of people needs better emotional literacy habits? How to visualize the emotions of a group? Emotion visualization is very difficult and amorphous topic, by the way. With each question, there was a river of answers though. Some answers are coming with their own theory; others are labeled as “Employee engagement” tools or pulse surveys. With in-depth research, we revealed a myriad of solutions. There was only one missing key piece.

How can a group of people understand its emotional climate effortlessly?

Really tough topic and other scientists battled to explore it, there are Geneva wheels, Pluchnick wheels, mood meters, to name a few. We stepped on those “giant research shoulders” in order to close the gap between theory and practice in today’s business environment. The first obvious gap is within meetings. After “deep work”, “meetings” are the main surface for collaboration, in which people frequently fail to comprehend the impacts of emotions.

Yet current tools or practices are not entirely helping them. We surveyed over 100 groups. Verbal check-ins are hard for the inexperienced; check-outs are challenging to facilitate after energy drain, “engagement surveys” are disengaging.

So our journey started by understanding the pros and cons of existing tools. A team can quickly sync their emotions by plotting on passive/active and negative/positive scales and picking a word that best describes their feelings.

It was good for opening up a discussion with the more shy people. But it was difficult to use, and people felt lost. After hundreds of shared moods, combining our knowledge from research and vision, we wanted to make it more constrained so people can have a better orientation.

Meanwhile our servers started collecting anonymous emotions like “exhilarated”, “terrified”, “confused”. We were using it internally for all of our meetings, probably when we felt the first Moodlight fatigue. Everything felt so boxed. We had to change something.

We introduced our “Palette”. The new version seemed promising as more teams started using it. Better orientation with more guides, free exploration of emotional space, bigger emotion resolution when plotting so similar emotion words can still be apart. What could go wrong? The journey is the reward, although our trip felt like “one step forward, two steps backward”. People still found it hard to contemplate. Nobody liked the “Burnout” section. The plot wasn’t very good with incentivizing honesty.

We got back to the whiteboard to siphon all knowledge we gathered from numerous other teams that started to use Moodlight.

We saw the first webinar usages too. Hundreds of people were using Moodlight simultaneously. To build empathy, understanding, and to regulate their emotions. After thousands of moods analyzed, we finally got a good idea of what was wrong with the whole experience.

• it was difficult for newcomers
• it was hard for facilitators to have efficient check-ins
• the UI felt disconnected from the action
• it wasn’t friendly for mobile users
• we had so many feedback for improvement that it almost felt like “death by thousand cuts”

We distilled our knowledge of newfound problems and came with a solution.

There’s no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.

~ Jonathan Ive, former Chief Design Officer of Apple Inc.

Reimagining the experience with the “Dial” plot

It tries to capture in a friendly way the notion of exploring your emotions. The plotting experience is cognitively lighter but we still support the same range of nuanced emotion words. The dial makes it possible to associate with the bigger color specter. Our vision for Moodlight is that it should be a conversation starter, and by making it straightforward, we can achieve it. The emojis are good guides for orientation and identification.

Everything is seemingly connected, one continuous flow to explore your emotions, one comprehensible way to view the emotional climate, one playful experience.

The new results make it possible to moodlight with small or large groups. The bubbles are a great way to view the emotional landscape and play with it.

The list view is fantastic at doing a small check-in if you’re using Moodlight like us — in our weekly meetings.

We wanted to deliver a radical way for people to connect emotionally in our frantic business daily routines. We believe we achieved it with the dial.

Why don’t you try it online here to see for yourself how fluid it is in our public plot?

If you are curious and feel adventurous you can also check our intro video https://youtu.be/4XufoEJDhck

Thank you for joining us in exploring the boundaries of how people can share their emotions. Together we can contribute to the mental shift for a more emotionally intelligent civilization.