What is the Role of UX in the Future Workplace?
The post COVID-19 workplace is in for a fundamental shift, how can UX be a compass in navigating these future workplace experiences.
COVID-19 as a Catalyst
Before COVID-19, offices were a foundational piece to an organization’s productivity, recruiting efforts, and culture. In San Francisco, class-A office spaces were snapped at a fastidious rate. Co-work companies like WeWork, Spaces, and RocketSpace thrived in this guzzling demand for real estate as companies projected spatial demands against their exponential growth models. To increase office space efficiency and foster collaboration in the space crunch, many offices embraced increased densification, hoteling, and open-offices as mandated benchmarks.
As COVID-19 struck, offices were left hanging empty and bare. Workplaces were barren as the virus made physical congregation dangerous. Increasingly, companies started to shift their operations towards a completely remote model, premised on the tools of technology and new communication styles. While companies like Twitter and Facebook have embraced a fully WFH model, other companies (like Trivago) have doubts over losing the office altogether. Alex Hefer (Trivago CEO) said “Twitter and Facebook, which have fully embraced remote work have got it all wrong. Trivago will instead launch a hybrid model that involves employees coming into the office once a month for a “homecoming”. Many companies, like Trivago, cite socialization, culture and collaboration as irreplaceable key anchors of the physical office.
“The last time companies have tried in the last big wave of “Ok, lets do more remote work,” most of those have failed. ” — Alex Hefer
COVID-19 has inadvertently redefined how we work without the standard workplace. Common office norms have been reconfigured or let go altogether for new remote work styles. Many initiatives have been forged in this period to retain productivity of the pre-COVID workplace, and some wonder if these initiatives are here to stay. 55% of workers surveyed from the Gensler WFH 2020 Survey indicated that new measures are required for the new workplace beyond COVID-19. Additionally, 73% of the respondents also wished for greater flexibility to work from home in the future post-COVID 19.
Working from home is here to stay but offices are not going to be gone either. As more and more companies contemplate their future beyond COVID-19, how would this post-COVID 19 workplace look like and what will be the role of user experience designers in defining this future workplace?
A Jaunt into the Future
Sunday 10.45 p.m. I sipped on my chamomile tea as I glanced into my work calendar, looking into my week ahead. Do I even have to head in tomorrow.
Four meetings — I should head in.
Flipping to my company’s workplace app, I locked in my attendance for tomorrow and let the algorithms work their magic. Seat selection, meeting room bookings, meal selection and commute options are now optimized with the combination of artificial intelligence and personalization. Manual selection, a relic of days past.
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It is 7.50 a.m., Monday. Another day at work.
I peered into the retina scanner to unlock the sliding doors into my office and head towards the pantry to pick up some breakfast. As I strolled in, the office concierge greets me and reminds me of upcoming community activities that might interest me. My personalized workplace app receives a notification of the new community events mentioned and who has RSVPed.
Behind me, my co-worker Sammy sneaks up to me and ambushes me with a hug. I reciprocated with a bear hug of my own and exchanged some stories about the recent happenings in my life. Sammy told me about his new puppy. Something that I have known from Sammy’s profile update in the workplace app. It has been 2 weeks since I saw Sammy in person. It was nice to catch-up in person as opposed to communicating digitally.
Looking into my workplace app, a flickering map prompts me towards where my work space of the day is within the dynamic workplace setting. A set workplace is no more.
Approaching my space, it smelt delightful. A clinical mixture of citrus Lysol and Spearmint — a reminder of the automatic desk sanitizer that routinely spritzes my personal work zone.
Refreshing.
The mild heat from the UV-lit personal cubby below my desk tinges my fingers as I pulled out my laptop and IT peripherals from the sanitized cubby zone. My stuff is fresh and warm.
Very haptic.
Scanning across my calendar, I made a mental note of my meetings today. Out of the four meetings, only one of those is in person. The next cyber meeting is in three minutes. Ugh, that coffee that I pre-scheduled will have to wait.
I grabbed my Oculus XV VR headset and walked towards the stipulated meeting den on the edge of the office. The room welcomes me with a melodic “bing” as I scan my retina and the door slides open. The meeting den is unlike the hermetically sealed rooms with screens of the yesteryears. Meeting den “Niagara” is a glass-encased room with a mixed mode of ventilation system overlooking Market Street below. I swear that I can smell the titillating scent of that nearby taco truck. Tables are gone, screens are gone, whiteboards are gone. All that remains are a bunch of comfortable chairs scattered within the room. Annie, my partner-in-crime for today’s meeting was already in the room when I got there, twiddling with her VR headset and she scrolled through her cellphone.
“Are you ready?”, Annie asked me as I settled down in a comfy chair somewhat near her.
“Yeah, let’s do this.”, I retorted with a meek smile. Annie and I put on our headsets and launched ourselves into this cyber meeting.
UX and the Future Workplace?
From the short future-casted fiction above, we can deduce a series of key tenets within the future workplace. These tenets stem from major work style behavioral shifts and reforged cultural norms, often realized through technological/organizational solutions. UXers will find themselves in the front and center of defining and enabling these tenets through each tenets’ service touchpoints and technical demands.
Intelligent Data-driven Workplace Experiences
The future workplace is one that knows and welcomes you. It will embrace big data collection/tracking, artificial intelligence, and automation to deliver an optimum employee workplace experience. Aspects of this workplace experience range from scheduling, commute, meals, community activities, and events. Personalized employee workplace mobile applications will allow one to craft their individual workplace experience while operationally synergizing on a company level to leverage proximities and economies of scale. These synergies will streamline workplace operations and employee logistics, allowing facility managers and HR personnel to forecast potential waxes and wanes of demand.
The role of UX is multifarious in the employment of big data and automated systems. UXers will have the heavy responsibility of maintaining the ethical checks and balances of these smart systems, writing the appropriate copy and caveats so that users are aware of how their data can potentially streamline and improve their workplace experience. On the employee side, UXers need to know what are the extents and justification of user data collection needed to power these intelligent systems. On the administrator’s side, UXers will need to strategize the visualization of metrics that aid in future planning and real-time response efforts.
Touchless Workplaces
The pandemic highlights the new need for touchless workplaces should a pandemic come back. This influences key human-computer interactions at workplace access points and security management systems of common facilities. Without touch, many of these seemingly common interactions will shift towards new touchless forms of communication, authentication and activation. These touchless forms of interactions can involve facial/voice recognition or through the use of personal mobile devices.
UXers need to rethink new interaction flows that no longer use typical visual-touch interactions as a baseline. New visual-voice or purely visual forms for interaction will increase within the sphere of environmental systems and controls. Additional provisions will need to be considered for such technologies to be inclusive and appropriate for all individuals.
Mixed-Mode Collaborations
Collaboration is a key draw of the in-person office experience. However, as a part of this hybrid work model, parts of the team might be working from home at all times due to various reasons. The occurrence of mixed-mode meetings might surge and there might be a need for new forms of technology or interactions to facilitate mixed-mode meetings effectively. New collaboration models need to transcend what we have learned from the COVID-19 WFH (work from home) experience.
Will there be further innovation into collaboration platforms that transcend the video/voice duality that defines the current video chat format? Is AR/VR a possible new trajectory moving forward to enable real-time action based collaboration actions like whiteboarding? Between the home and the workplace, how can we equalize the collaboration experience between the two main modes of collaboration in the future? All the above questions are things UXers should think about moving forward. The realm of AR/VR will again spur a new set of virtual interaction norms that involve a virtual three-dimensional context and inform future possibilities of equalizing home/office collaboration experiences.
Designing for an Enhanced Social Compact
Under this hybrid model, socialization becomes one of the main reasons for people to come into the office. People are yearning for the serendipitous collisions and face to face conversations that forges relationship capital between partiers. Community activities within the office are powerful social mixers for one to know others beyond the office context. Are there technological tools within employee apps that can foster and nurture intra-worker networking and socialization? Will knowing who is in the office today influence your decision to head in?
UXers will need to test organizational structures and think about potential tools that can promote such socialization behaviors. An uncareful roll-out of such technologically enabled socialization features might induce alternative user patterns that could hurt employee socialization motivation and shift the needle from camaraderie towards creepiness instead.
UX and its Guardianship of the Future Workplace
This is the moment where as a society, we can break from the inertia of previous habits and systems. The office will never be the same again and the home will be a part of our office whether we like it or not. As technology becomes more ingrained into the workplace environment and tools, it will be fundamental for UXers to make sure that these future workplace experiences are ethical, delightful, effective, and accessible. A successful roll-out of these future innovations will induce transformational change within our work lives, moving us towards a more delightful and optimized future.
