Envoy Rooms
User Problem / Opportunity
Traditional room booking tools didn’t account for hybrid work. They booked space based on invite size, not who was actually in the office, leading to wasted space and poor coordination. Envoy was uniquely positioned to solve this by using its desk reservation data to book the right-sized rooms in the right locations, dynamically adjusting as on-site attendance changed.
Business Goals
Drive upsell opportunities, and to expand Envoy’s product ecosystem. Product leadership set our KPI as increasing percentage of existing Envoy customers who adopted Envoy Rooms by 10%
Role
Sole Product Designer
Worked with a team of ~6 engineers to implement
Project Timeline
1.5 months
Responsibilities
User research
Interaction design
Usability testing
Visual design
Beta tablet design before updates
Qualitative Research & Planning
At the start of the project, Envoy Rooms was in a minimal beta state - live with just two customers and limited to a basic tablet display. So I conducted qualitative research with 2 beta admins as well as with 4 prospective customers.
Research Insights:
employees struggled to identify rooms at a glance due to text-heavy displays
colorblind users couldn’t easily distinguish availabilityusers wanted the ability to book meetings both on the wall tablet and from their Envoy mobile app
users requested more functionality within the "create meeting" flow on the tablet itself.
These insights helped shape my priorities.
Tablet after design updates
Design Iteration
I mocked up several design solutions and shared them with beta and prospective customers for feedback. After each round, I refined the design, focusing on simplifying the interface, improving accessibility, and enhancing meeting creation functionality. The engineering team quickly implemented most changes, and we released updates to more beta customers, gathering continuous feedback to ensure the design met admin needs.
Updated design to make schedule interactive
Usability Updates
After releasing the design to six beta customers, we added a feedback option directly on the tablets to gather insights from end users, as company admins wouldn’t allow us to meet with them directly. Additionally, we released the product internally at Envoy and I conducted usability tests with employees using the product for the first time.
Insights:
Users expected to be able to interact with the schedule display.
Users expected Slack and Teams integration, which had been an oversight in our planning until now.
Impact
Envoy Rooms was successful on launch. Enough existing Envoy customers implemented it that it was adopted into the “Envoy Workplace” bundle shortly after release, which is used by a majority of Envoy customers.
Updated design to make schedule interactive
Surprises & What I’d Do Differently
One of the biggest challenges in this project was that company admins wouldn’t allow us to meet or test directly with their employees, so almost all of our end-user feedback was secondhand. We mitigated this by adding a feedback option on the tablet and running internal tests with Envoy employees. However, if I could do the project again, I’d push harder to test directly with end users to gain more accurate insights.
A surprising discovery was the importance of Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations for meeting bookings. No one on my team used these tools for meeting creation, and they hadn’t come up in any of our research with admins, so it was a blindspot in our planning. Thankfully, we uncovered this need during internal testing, but looking back, I would have prioritized exploring alternative meeting creation workflows like these from the beginning.
Room usage insights & mobile booking
Follow Ups
While I focused on the initial go-to-market phase, my team continued iterating on Envoy Rooms after its initial release. We added features like room usage insights, TV displays inside rooms, improved mobile booking, permissions updates, etc.
These updates helped refine the user experience and address customer needs.
