Designing collaboration as a service
Weframe (now Cannyboard) is a tech scale-up that transforms hybrid meetings with its smartboards and collaboration tools. My team aimed to expand from renting smartboards for event spaces to selling them for permanent corporate use. As a Service Designer, I helped uncover user insights, map key touchpoints, and drive cross-department collaboration to ensure a successful expansion.
Company
Weframe
Role
Service Design
Year
2021
User Research
Strategy
Service Design
Workshop Facilitation
Context
The idea of Weframe builds on three pillars:
Technology
A 87” Smartboard with touchscreen replaces beamer, flipchart and whiteboard.
Space
In 700+ locations you find a ready-made room where you can immediately start your hybrid meeting.
Culture
Teams are co-creatively enabled to conduct productive hybrid meetings.
The Challenge
Shifting from a tech-driven approach to a user-centered strategy while navigating a complex stakeholder landscape. There was limited awareness of customer touchpoints and user journeys, making it difficult to align the product with the needs of end-users and decision-makers.
Expand into a new business area by selling smartboards for permanent use in corporate environments, rather than just renting them for temporary events.
As a Service Designer, my role involved uncovering user insights, mapping key touchpoints, and facilitating collaboration across departments to ensure a successful expansion.
Approach
Mapping Stakeholders and Flows
The first step was to consolidate the existing, fragmented knowledge across teams. It became clear that there was no unified understanding of the relevant stakeholders and their journeys internally. Visualizations helped define a shared perspective and align everyone.
Stakeholder and Flows (blurred)
Foundational Research
Building on internal assumptions, I went out to create a real-world perspective.
This began with key questions like:
What does the purchase process look like for larger devices?
Who needs to be convinced to make the purchase, and who will use the smartboards?
What are the existing pain points in the corporate meeting experience?
To gather insights, I observed and interviewed non-Weframe customers and shadowed existing customers in their current meeting routines. These observations were recorded and systematically analyzed.
Remote interview
Shadowing a workshop
Notes on observations
Evaluated observations
Creating Visual Journeys and Maps
Translating insights into visual formats such as journey maps and stakeholder maps helped make complex processes tangible. These visuals were shared with cross-functional teams to ensure a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities.
B2B2C Journey
B2B Journey + Service Blueprint
A/B Testing
An A/B test comparing two start screens revealed that Screen B increased user engagement by 70% compared to the previous version. In contrast, Screen B achieved only a 37% improvement, indicating that users benefited significantly more from Screen B's reduced complexity.
Distributing Insights
Sharing insights within the wider team was crucial. To build buy-in and support for user-centered initiatives, I facilitated workshops with senior stakeholders, including cross-departmental sessions with C-level executives. I worked closely with the sales team to align messaging with customer needs and collaborated with product development on sprint planning.
Result
Strategic Initiatives and Outcomes
Onboarding Revamp: Redesigned onboarding together with Weframe Academy.
Sales Messaging Redefined: Collaborated with sales to refine the corporate pitch deck for a more targeted approach.
MS Teams Integration: Priorized MS Teams feature to fit corporate user flows.
Standby Screen Redesign: Created a more actionable standby screen for improved functionality.
Standby Screen before redesign
Redesigned Standby Screen: Integrates usage context and provides clear prompts to initiate use cases.
Reflection
Driving User Centricity
Through research and cross-functional collaboration, we laid the foundation for a more user-centered approach at Weframe. The insights informed product and sales strategies and aligned internal teams with customer and user needs.
Personally, I learned that gathering insights is one thing, but the bigger challenge was bringing those insights into teams and driving real change, especially in an environment with little focus on user-centered approaches.
Team
Within the Customer Experience Team:
Head of Customer Experience
User Researcher
Brand Designer
Service Designer (Me)