As more and more people are returning to the office the demands on desk booking features are rapidly changing. For some, the most important thing is to measure the number of people in the office, others need to track the zone or the exact desks that are booked. Sometimes the requirement is to have enough unbooked desks to allow for unplanned office work and others want help finding their colleagues.
We hear many ideas, and are guilty of coming up with a few of ourselves. Some good - others... less good. We could show who has a birthday, who wants to go for lunch or coffee, plan an after work, suggest it is time to raise your table to a standing position… and much much more.
The point is, no one seems to know exactly what will be needed, because we have not had the time to iterate the process of returning to the office yet.
Our product development method is quite simple. We believe in developing products and services based on validated learnings. We run development on fundamentally lean principles, with a focus on secure and stable code. This leads to exceptionally precise and purpose built products that will help you improve meetings in your organization.
Tobias Liljedahl, CPO Humly
Much like returning to the office, this method requires time and feedback in order to produce truly efficient products.
We have had Humly Desk Booking out in the market for about four months but due to lockdowns and restrictions we cannot trust much of the data. Only looking at the data for the last few months could actually do more harm than good right now from a product development perspective. That’s why we always make it a practice to combine quantitative data with qualitative data in the form of end user interviews.
So while we wait for for more conclusive data we have asked some of our customers what they think would improve the Humly Desk Booking experience and the main feedback circles around three main topics:
- The ability to book shorter increments and not feel pressured to come in a full day.
- The ability to book several desks at the same time, in order to plan out a week ahead and/or book for colleagues that you want to sit together with.
- Team bookings by zone with flexible seating within that zone.
We have already started taking some steps based on the qualitative data, but we are eager to learn more about how our customers actually use desk booking during this critical period - so we have decided to give away Humly Desk Booking for free until the end of the year for new customers. If you are already an existing customer, don’t worry - we will extend your license so your paid period will start again in January 2022.
Contact your local reseller to arrange a free Humly Desk Booking license already today! Also head over to our Linkedin page to follow us and take part in the current poll and influence the prioritization of the features listed above.