Anyone in for a coffee?

The app for transparent office presence in 9 days

Anyone home?

With us, the office is everywhere - at home, in the vacation home, even in the Saarbrücken outdoor office when the sun is shining! No forced office days, but full flexibility for all employees.

At our main location in Saarbrücken, it is therefore never entirely predictable who will be in the office and who will be working remotely. This has a nice surprise effect ("You here??"), but sometimes you miss the chance to have a coffee with your favorite colleague because you don't know that she's trotting on our walking desk one floor below.

When our new intern started with us, we thought: "Hey, why don't we let him tackle our Remote First problem?" But was it even possible to do this in the short time of the internship, namely just 9 days?

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Client:

Centigrade

Dienstleistung

Services:

UI Design

UX Design

Frontend Engineering

Backend Engineering

Prototyping

UX Research

The Solution

We needed a simple display of who is currently in the Saarbrücken office and who is working remotely in order to maintain positive dynamics and togetherness in the office.

Blended Workspace Goodness in a pixel look

In just 9 days, we created a pixel map of our office where you can place your personalzsed avatar where you are working.

Blended Workspace Goodness in a pixel look

In just 9 days, we created a pixel map of our office where you can place your personalzsed avatar where you are working.

The challenge: 9 days, few resources, little experience

If we could play a soundtrack at this point, it would be tension-building music from a Mission Impossible showdown. Our intern didn't have to abseil through a security net made of lasers, but the challenge was certainly comparable:

Only 9 days’ time
Little practical experience (which is completely normal and totally okay!)
Only one colleague stood firmly by our hero's side

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An app in 9 days — how does that work??

First ingredient: An extremely focused, clever intern who was up for it.

Second ingredient: A scalable UX process and a cleverly and "leanly"outlined MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that got right to the heart of the matter: a simple display system that tells you who is in the office without any frills.

Third ingredient: an agile mindset to make this intense, exciting 9-day sprint as lean and continuous as possible.

Fortunately, we had all the ingredients in house and our intern was able (and willing) to hit the ground running from day 1.

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The schedule

Day 1: First steps and learnings in Angular

Day 2: Getting a taste of other tools, creating a first rough concept

Day 3: Basic structure of the app, pixelating the office

Day 4-7: Implementing basic functions, improving HTML, continuous integration, continuous user space scaling, several short colleague reviews

Day 8-9: Finalization, presentation, official release

Lean UX as a recipe for success

In this project, the lean UX approach showed us once again how far you can get in a short space of time. Our intern went through the entire software development cycle for the app: from the idea and brainstorming in the design thinking workshop to the first sketch and the first prototype through to shipping and the final release.

Although the time was so tight, there was still enough room for him to try things out and get creative thanks to the clear, agile process and our Continuous UX approach. He set aside some good ideas as "out of scope" to keep theMVP lean and, above all, feasible, such as a coordination option for lunch together. Making the decisions to leave things out was perhaps his most important learning. And it's also the biggest challenge for professional product owners and product managers...

The internal response to the tool was great, and the first customers expressed interest after seeing the tool in meetings with us. To be continued - we are excited about the future of Team Tether!

Does this approach sound exciting? Find out more about our lean UX methods and how we at Centigrade deliver first release-ready increments and UX prototypes in a short time!💡

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