Overview

During the COVID-19 period, working from home has way more challenges than expected. After talking with some of my colleagues and ex-colleagues, I made a list of pain points that we have in common:

• Lack of communication and intimacy. A lot of info flows over the informal chats aside from work. Working away from office reduce the chance that we join together and talk.
• Incomplete sense of colleagues’ status. In office, people are aware of the flow of the physical space, yet in the digital world, there are no more than the green/red dots next to the profile picture or a line of text.

My colleague Ping Lu and I came up with Virtual Office Space idea which could mitigate this situation. It is a customizable office floor plan allowing team members to see who are available for a typical coffee chats during working at home.

Design Process

• Competitor analysis
• Survey
• Persona creation
• Wireframe and prototype

Prototype

For the MVP version, there’re the core features:

• Draw the office space in grids
• Overview of all active colleague in the virtual space
• Add text labels anywhere on the canvas
• Video chat with colleague when approaching with each other