WeWork

Using theDesign Sprint 2.0 to validate on-demand offerings.

Overview

WeWork has established itself as the leading company for co-work spaces globally and is consistently looking for new ways to innovate and build new business models. In 2019, WeWork had been looking for new monetization paths in the run-up to its IPO. They were looking to design and test a new service model—on-demand offerings.

My Role

I was the Design Sprint organizer and participant. In addition, I also lead the interaction design and prototype execution. I also worked closely with the engineering team to validate technical feasibility. This was in conjunction while working at Toi.

The Challenge

Leverage WeWork's membership offerings and translate that to on-demand offerings in a very competitive space

The We Company is launching many new business opportunities, yet WeWork, still the core business model, is a membership model for offices, desks and conference/event spaces. Competitors have emerged offering on-demand booking offerings. WeWork looked to test the feasibility of adding in on-demand booking capabilities to capture the revenue potential of unused space without disrupting the core user experience of the membership-driven service. From a service standpoint, each location is currently set up to manage members as opposed to single-use customers.
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WeWork needed to test this model as quickly as possible inside a massive global management team that is very dynamic due to WeWork's meteoric growth.

The Solution

Design Sprint 2.0 Method

In a company that is distributed, with a ton of moving pieces all over the world including massive upward mobility, our two teams were able to execute a design sprint and then produce a live, functioning commerce platform with a service strategy to execute the model in 30 days!

Leading up to the design sprint, I researched the current booking process of WeWork and the major on-demand space providers. The WeWork team generated analytics reports of space availability and test market feasibility, San Francisco and New York made the most sense. The WeWork team booked a competitor space for Day 1.
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Day 1

Mapping and sketching

The WeWork team was well versed in design thinking workshops and enjoyed the structure and fast pace of the Design Sprint 2.0. The sprint team was comprised of 7 people (3 from Toi) with a mix of marketing, product, technical, and PR. WeWork brought 2 members from New York since we would be targeting both SF and NY for the MVP. For the first day, we ran the workshop inside of a competitor space to create an experiential environment. Going through an actual booking and usage process created a very present understanding of what potential users experience during an on-demand booking experience. After the morning note and vote exercises, the decider chose “rebooking” (a customer booking a second time) as the sprint goal. We created the map, had a very diverse lightning demo session due to the variance of participants in the room, and then we’re off and sketching!
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Day 2

Note and vote

On day two We moved the workshop to the executive office in SalesForce tower aka WeWork HQ. (Side note, mad props to WeWork for really “using their product.” The internal teams use standard customer experiences and workspaces to test and validate everything.) After voting on solutions, the decider picked two concepts to work with. We mapped out the user test flow and then everyone went to work on their storyboards. Once again the decider combined screens from two storyboards to create the final prototype.

Day 3

Design and prototyping

I got to work creating the prototype, which was completed in a single day as is typical for the DS 2.0. I used Sketch to facilitate the design and InVision for prototyping needs.

Day 4

User testing and feedback

We tested the prototype with users through an amazing tool called Maze to get feedback and packaged the outcomes for the WeWork team along with recommendations. The user testing surfaced some issues and concerns… which is great! We were able to generate an in-depth report of recommendations for an iterations sprint and it also set up the next service strategy exercises that was planned for week 2.

Learnings and Outcomes

In 4 weeks, the business model was designed and developed with all the operational details worked out between the WeWork and Toi teams. After running testing and analytical simulations, the ultimate result was that the WeWork team actually invalidated the idea for the time being and decided to not move forward with the live implementation. Because of the low investment of time and resources, WeWork has had the option to forego a live launch of the new service model. The team was grateful for the experience as they were able to save a considerable amount of time and money going through the design sprint process as opposed to typical ideation, planning, design, and development processes. This is where the strength of the design sprint comes in. This project was a prime candidate for validating or, in this case, invalidating an idea early on in the process.