Project Converge
A Microsoft Research project in partnership with REI Co-op
Summary
When REI Co-op transitioned to satellite offices in 2020, it created a new challenge: how do you preserve an award-winning company culture when employees are suddenly hybrid?
As lead UX Designer, I led the design effort to rebuild that sense of connection and belonging—partnering with REI's Technology & Operations, Technology Transformation Management, and IT Infrastructure & Cloud Computing Services teams to surface in-person connection opportunities directly within Microsoft Teams, the collaboration tool employees were already using daily.
Check out the Converge promotional video
Challenges & Opportunities
REI Co-op had appeared on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list for 23 consecutive years—every year since the list's inception.
In August 2020, REI announced its shift to a distributed work model and put its newly completed corporate campus up for sale, leaving office space for only 15–20% of corporate employees.
This space reduction raised a critical question: how do you preserve an award-winning culture when most employees are rarely in the building?
Every idea we explored kept circling back to the same problem: if employees were only in-office occasionally, how could they maximize face time with the coworkers they most wanted or needed to collaborate with?
Our hypothesis: Helping employees identify and maximize in-person connection time would improve culture—specifically, connection and belonging.
Here's what we built:
Shows users who else is working in their location based on calendar data.
Recommends workplaces for a user based on where the user’s coworkers and top collaborators will be.
Recommends meeting locations (office space, restaurants, or parks) equidistant from multiple coworkers to facilitate connection.
Pilot & Learnings
Converge launched to 105 users in October 2021, available to anyone who self-discovered the app. By the end of the pilot, 81 users were active, having facilitated over 200 bookings across workspaces, flex seating, conference rooms, and "outside of work" meetups.
Approximately five weeks after full deployment, we surveyed users to gauge satisfaction. Results were mixed: while Converge showed real potential to positively impact REI's culture, the findings pointed to a need for a broader, longer trial to validate that impact. A surge in COVID-19 cases during the pilot period also limited its reach and effect, making it hard to fully assess Converge's potential in this initial run.
Final update: In 2022, REI contracted with a technology partner to continue rolling out and testing Converge—starting with an internal adoption push among HQ staff over the summer, followed by an evaluation of usage and impact to inform future investment.
This research contributed to 3 U.S. patents — including "Method and System for Facilitating Convergence" and "Method and System for Intelligently Managing Facilities" — and helped inform the development of Microsoft Places.
Feedback from the team
"You are very focused on the customer + their journey. Many of us get lost with the tech or the mechanics of shipping but you've been super focused on the user … their needs, journey, and pains. I appreciate this as it anchors us to what matters. We need more of this at Microsoft!!"
"He brings unimaginable ideas to the table, which helps the customer think big. Viva Insight folks were impressed with his work and want to work with him on some of their ideas. He goes above and beyond to build a vision for our customers. He always places the customer first. I love his work and his passion for UX."
"You excel at creating incredible innovative designs, but your key strength is your willingness to integrate feedback. I suspect it must be hard as a designer to create a "baby" and that have others poke holes at it. You seek out these others, ask for their opinions for improvement, read articles (even academic ones) for improvement, and pay close attention to customer's needs and feedback for improvement, and then you ACTUALLY make the changes. Frankly, I've been spending our time working together learning how you do it, and will continue to do so."