WeWork

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EngagementFull-time

RoleDesign Director

PlatformsiOS, Android, Web

TimeframeDec 2015 - May 2018

Pre-Membership Design Team Lead

I joined WeWork as I have a passion for real estate, and there was a lot of room for growth. The cherry on top was the crossover between digital and physical design.

This story began when I initially met Tomer Sharon at a Design Studio Methodology Workshop that he was teaching in 2013 while we were both employed at Google. Fast forward a few years, Tomer reached out to me to share his vision and his plans at WeWork. I could not be more excited. Tomer was a legend in my eyes. He was previouly on the Google Search team as a Senior User Experience Researcher. He also wrote the book titled It's Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects. So naturally, I accepted a full-time role at WeWork as a Design Team Lead. I was his first hire, and we had a long road ahead of us.

In the first week we talked about what he is accomplished so far. The foundation for everything we were doing was around these User Journeys he identified. Later these evolved to Pre-Membership, Onboarding, Membership, Growth, and Alumni. In the first month we made an integral hire, Benjamin Gadbaw. He was hired to lead our service design. Quick side note, he is absolutely brilliant and an absolute pleasure to work with.

Project Ciao

Adam Neumann, the CEO and co-founder, came over to me and said, "Lobby." I responded with, "What?". Which he replied, "Fix my lobbies!" as he walked away from me. This is how the project began.

The first thing we had to do was understand the problems. We started off by setting up a camera and recorded everyone that walked through the lobby for 72 hours straight, and we set up a temp workstation for some observational research.

The Problems

When people arrive they don’t know where to go
Our short term memory makes for lots of re-introductions
We do not design for crowds
We say hello, but not bye
Inconsistent rules mean FDAs have to play bad cop
There are too many systems for managing entrance

Path of Individuals

We tracked and identified everyone that entered through the lobby. Once we had that information, we were able to map out optimal paths for individuals and see what issues they faced upon entering the building.

Design Studio

Once we had a lay of the land, it was time to bring everyone together. We organized a Design Studio. We had vital partners from different departments, including real estate, operations, architects, and interior designers, to participate. They shared their ideas, and we learned more about the problem.

The Solutions

Visitor App

We designed an iPad app prototype that welcomed visitors as they came through the lobby. We created this around, what we called, the Lobby Pyramid.

This project became a great success as we were able to reduce the six tools down into just one simple and clean interface.

Our simple iPad app was the catalyst for acquiring Welkio. Flo and DJ, the founders, ended up taking over this part of the project.

Security

Not all the ideas we wanted to implement was a success. Because we had so many visitors, we wanted to deploy badges. The executive team was not in favor of this idea.