User Journey Mapping | Product Ideation | Multimedia

Role: research, concept design, graphic illustrations, animation, script, storytelling

The New York Office winner of Gensler’s 2019 New Ventures Challenge, Space XP is a digital product suite intended to enhance user experience in the workplace, while collecting valuable data. The concept was developed for a pitch presentation as part of an annual competition for innovations. Providing a digital product suite would enable the enhancement of the built environment by connecting building systems with end user technology.

Project Context

This project started as part of Gensler’s annual New Ventures Challenge in early 2019. Each year, the challenge entails numerous workshops throughout the month of March inviting anyone from across the firm to participate in exercises to help them brainstorm initial ideas and problem spaces for areas the firm could expand its offerings.

At one workshop, a few colleagues and I brainstormed similar ideas around developing an incubator engine and product platform for Gensler to offer workplace technology products. As a Design Strategist within Gensler’s Consulting studio, my role often entailed speaking with employees working in these workplaces to understand their needs. We often offered consult and guidance about what technology to include in the workplaces - meeting room reservation systems, check-in apps, environmental apps, visitor management - but did not offer product solutions of our own. My team formed to begin pitching this idea and bringing it to life. We pitched our initial idea at the NYC office challenge in April 2019 and won the competition, enabling us to further develop our idea and a pitch video for the regional competition in September 2019.

Research

Competitive Analysis

To understand the workplace technology landscape, our team identified researched other market players. Products on the market that were explored included Robin Workplace App, Comfy, Teem by WeWork, and Hummingbird Ex by iOffice. The most common functionalities were meeting room availability, room & desk reservation, temperature & lighting control, visitor notification, spatial analytics, room search & reservation, and navigation support.

Key Takeaway(s)

• The biggest gap in the market is that clients need to go to a plethora of sources for different functionality. Finding a full-service experience platform that integrates successfully with the design and functionality of the physical design is a major gap.

Client Interviews

Our team conducted 6 interviews with client stakeholders (members of the Real Estate teams) from the firm’s major clients. In addition to insights that our team and internal Gensler employees from projects throughout their work, these concrete interviews offered more insight into how real estate teams make workplace decisions, the types of technology and experiences they seek to support in the workplace, and what types of information they are trying to understand about how the workplace functions.

Key Takeaway(s)

• Analytics are the main value for real estate teams who want to understand how users are engaging with their spaces in a seamless way

• Biggest pain points in workplace experience technology are space management (keeping a real-time view of what the workplace looks like) and meeting and desk reservation systems

Synthesis

Using the information we heard from clients, as well as insights from internal Gensler employees, our team ideated around potential solutions and functionality. We broke ideas down based on 4 spectrums into the future:

1. Mainstream - within 1 year

2. Soon - 5 years out

3. Near Future - 5-10 years out

4. Frontier - 20 years out

Design Concept

Concept

To address these issues and collect valuable data about the end users, our team developed Space XP, a concept for a digital product suite that would contain a variety of functions available to our clients. These functions would not only enhance user experience by providing unique features that current tools do not, but would also mean that space and digital were deployed cohesively.

Product Functions

Use Cases

Digital Concierge

Employees can send the digital concierge app to visitors ahead of time. Upon arrival, the app grants visitors access to the workplace with a QR code, coordinates with security in real-time, and notifies the host, providing a frictionless experience.

Meeting Room Management

Making reservations through the enhanced meeting room management system enables employees to pre-load content and begin meetings more quickly. As the meeting draws to a close, the in-room device will alert meeting participants and provide a “snooze” option, notifying those holding the upcoming room reservation and reduce friction.

Video Storyboarding

For the regional pitch competition in September 2019, our team was asked to prepare a 5 minute pitch video. Before developing the graphics, animations, and script, we storyboarded the pitch - introducing the problem space, highlighting Gensler’s value proposition, noting competitors, and estimating the market size and potential revenue.

Implementation

Feature Roadmap

Thinking through a loose product timeline, our team envisioned first tackling the Digital Concierge application because of its relative simplicity. Through this pilot project, we would then strengthen and build a product team of product managers, software developers, data scientists, and designers to build the more detailed applications such as environmental monitoring.

Additionally, we would set the product team up as an incubation and innovation arm that would consistently be identifying additional workplace technology needs to inform the future roadmap for Gensler’s Space XP platform.

Market Estimation

The last exercise our team performed as part of our New Ventures regional pitch was to estimate the market size and projected revenue. After first piloting the features within a Gensler office, we anticipated working with a select group of clients to launch the product suite before entering the broader U.S. market. BOMA representatives manage 10.5 billion SF of office space of which 80% are class A and B (corporate office spaces). We estimated targeting a modest .025% of the 8.4 billion SF of Class A and B office space in the U.S. with a product fee valued at $0.50 per SF. At that rate, we anticipated earning around $1 million in year 2. With a steady 50% growth rate, by year 5, we would be serving nearly 10 million SF of office space, earning around $5 million annually.

Our team sought $250,000 of seed funding to help launch this product, covering costs for labor and hardware integration prototyping. The goal was to utilize Gensler expertise and minimize 3rd party developers by using cross-platform app development toolkits. Although our maintenance and support expenses were expected to scale with growth, the high value of the workplace technology market would ensure profitability.