Anyone in for a coffee?
The app for transparent office presence in 9 days
Client
Centigrade GmbH
Internal Internship
Industry
Gamification
Business Software
Digitalization
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?
We needed a simple display without a
lot of frippery of who is currently
present in the Saarbrücken office and
who is working remotely to maintain
the positive dynamics and
togetherness of the office.
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
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.
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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