Overview: making hybrid desk booking visible
For a global software company, hybrid work meant rethinking how employees found a place to work. We introduced Desk Sign alongside its existing booking platform, bringing live desk availability into the office itself.
The challenge: finding a desk
Employees couldn’t see which desks were free. The company had moved to hybrid work with no assigned desks, so finding an available seat was part of every office visit.
The booking system worked. It knew which desks were reserved and which were free. But that information lived inside an app, not in the room. To find a seat, employees had to stop, open the app and match what it showed to the desks around them, right when they wanted to get to work.
The company had the data. It needed to show it where employees could use it.
For a company relying on the office to bring people together, that friction mattered. Coming in had to feel worthwhile, not add another task before the day could start.
The solution: live desk status
Desk Sign showed each desk’s availability directly at the workstation. Connected to the company’s existing booking platform, it brought information that once lived only in the app into the room.
The company’s SVP of Workplace agreed to trial Desk Sign, and we installed the signs across the workspace over a single weekend. The SVP set one test for success: employees should understand it without instruction. Just in case, the SVP also planned a backup: a lunchtime training session on the first Monday.
The booking platform and the office finally told the same story.
Walk in. Look. Sit down. Start working.
The outcome: no training needed
Employees were already using the signs before the planned training session. By lunchtime on the first Monday, it was clear the backup training session wasn’t needed.
“Placeholder: a short quote from the SVP of Workplace about the first Monday, pending customer approval.”SVP of Workplace, Global Software Company
It passed the SVP’s own test. For a workplace leader, a cancelled training session is a rare kind of good news: the experience worked without an explanation.
Why adoption matters for hybrid workplaces
Installation puts technology in the workplace. Adoption decides whether it becomes part of the workday.
When employees need training, workplace and IT teams have to prepare materials, answer questions and support every office and schedule. In a global organization, no leader can personally explain every device on every floor.
Here, the SVP expected employees might need help and set aside time to give it. Their behavior answered the adoption question first. The booking platform already had the answer, and Desk Sign made it visible where employees needed it.