Industrious Final Report: Creating natural, authentic connection in shared workspace. Presented by Feifey, Seren and Sophie, over a photo of office towers.

Industrious: Creating Natural, Authentic Connection in Shared Workspaces

Role: UX Researcher
Team: Feifey, Seren, Sophie
Partner: Industrious
Program: SVA MFA IxD

Why do coworking members share a building but rarely connect? We interviewed members, hybrid workers and an operations expert, and proposed three ways to make connection feel natural instead of forced.

UX ResearchService DesignWorkplace

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At a glance

9people interviewed across members, hybrid workers and operations
<10people came to a building-wide member event
3core insights from affinity mapping
3recommendations, prioritized by cost and value

Context

A full building, an empty event.

“Believe it or not, there was probably less than 10 people for that whole building that came… (Japanese Stitching Event)… Less than 10 people.”

Industrious worker

Industrious runs premium shared workplaces, and its members already value the professional, well-supported service. But programmed events draw few people, and members rarely get to know the people working around them.

Research goal & purpose

Increase the interaction between workers and the usage of shared office spaces.

Foster stronger belonging and engagement.

03 · Goal

Higher member retention at Industrious.

Research

How we did the research

01 Planning & Preparation

Set up the research goal, recruiting and interview questions.

02 Data Collection

Interviews, organized into participant snapshots with key quotes.

03 Analysis & Synthesis

Affinity mapping and pattern recognition, distilled into 3 core insights.

04 Ideation & Recommendations

How Might We questions, then solutions.

Common

Most participants work hybrid, moving fluidly between office, home and third spaces.
People want awareness without interruption: knowing who is around, without being watched or socially exposed.
Responsiveness, clarity and everyday kindness matter more than formal bonding or networking.
Social connection is preferred when it is embedded in daily routines (coffee, lunch, brief check-ins), not scheduled events.

Industrious members & expert

Daily touchpoints (tea, coffee, greetings) outperform big events.
Topic-based or utility-driven interactions (classes, markets tied to personal interests) beat generic social events.
Shared amenities like the coffee bar and cafeteria work as natural, low-pressure social touchpoints in short, task-adjacent moments.
Post-COVID, large programmed events declined, replaced by small, recurring rituals.

Office-hybrid workers

Workers prioritize choice, flexibility and psychological safety in both space and social interaction.
Many avoid events that require forced interaction with strangers or unclear expectations (who attends, dress code, purpose).
Peer-driven interaction feels safer and more meaningful than manager-led, top-down initiatives.
Spatial conditions (noise, partitions, visibility, quiet zones) strongly affect whether people open up or withdraw.

Insights

Three themes behind the empty room

Affinity mapping the interviews surfaced three themes: whether people can be themselves, how much control they have over their environment, and where warmth at work really comes from.

Theme 1

Can I be myself here?

People hesitate to join office events not because they doubt the event’s value, but because they’re unsure if they can show up as themselves without forced performance.

Three illustrations of feeling you need to “perform”: juggling many expectations, standing awkwardly in a group, and feeling overwhelmed

“I am past the show and trying to impress anyone… I would rather go to a bar with one or two people that I know really well, where we can just be ourselves.”

Avoid feeling “performative” or acting like someone else
Avoid feeling obliged to make contextless small talk
Prefer gathering with close, trusted people

Theme 2

Control over environment and work style

Workers are not choosing between focus and collaboration. They want to stay mentally focused while socially present, and current workplace design doesn’t support this in-between state.

Focus and collaboration with an in-between state: “So many people want different things and they interrupt” versus “It would be so much easier to just go over and ask, can you help me with this really quick.”

They don’t simply need different spaces for focus and collaboration. They need shared environments that communicate intent without explanation.

The gap between focus and collaboration: one worker uses headphones as a “door shut” signal; another says if they have to email anyway, they might as well not come in.

Theme 3

Appreciation, bonding & the role of shared office spaces

When top-down systems fail to provide human warmth, employees turn to bottom-up connections for fulfilment, which creates a gap that shared office spaces can bridge.

Diagram: the company sends standardized treatment down to employees, who couldn’t feel respect and warmth. Quote: “There’s no personal touch to it… you should be grateful, show up and do it.”

Top-down treatment feels impersonal.

Diagram: employees build bottom-up bonding with each other. Quote: “We have a good team. That’s why I’m still there.”

Peers become the reason to stay.

Diagram: employees from different companies in one building, connected underneath by Industrious as a bridge

Design Opportunity

Facilitating organic connection

What Industrious already does well

A professional, well-supported system for workers.
Valuable services that meet daily workplace needs.

The opportunity

A better space for people to be themselves and connect organically:

Create natural interaction touchpoints, not forced networking
Enable peer-driven community building
Design for comfort and psychological safety
Support warmth throughout the building

Solution

Three recommendations

Solution #1: Low-stakes conversation starters

Start where small talk already happens.

Getting coffee, eating, and waiting for the elevator are moments when people naturally start conversations. We turn each one into a light, optional prompt.

Where small conversations start at Industrious: 1. the coffee bar, 2. the eating area, 3. waiting by the elevator

Concepts: a tea and coffee bean vote (Kenya or Columbia) at the coffee bar, a local restaurant map on the table, and a screen of peer-driven activity in the elevator

Solution #2: Peer-driven events in the app

Let members host their own events.

Today the app is underused and feels top-down, like a newsletter that only sends out information. One member said: “I was trying to look for the breakfast menu, but I cannot find anything!”

The current Industrious app events screen, which only lists upcoming events, beside the member quote about not finding the breakfast menu

Letting workers create and search events around shared interests allows bottom-up connections, lets people show their authentic selves and hobbies, and ties them to the broader office community, which builds loyalty and retention.

Example features: a create-event flow with name, time and location fields, and an interest-based event search

Solution #3: Nuanced space

Focus zones inside social spaces.

Some workers need ambient presence (the energy of people and background noise) but want to work alone without social interaction. A nuanced space sits between collaboration and focus.

Sketch of an open office next to a partitioned desk row, labelled as a nuanced space between collaboration and focus

Dining and kitchen areas are usually social, but they can be rethought with small micro-zones that signal a worker’s intention to focus. As one participant put it: “I’ll go to the coffee shop, there is white noise, something to drink, and I am able to focus.”

Photos of the Industrious dining area with a small focusing zone marked, and a person working with headphones in a busy café

Prioritization

Start small, then build

Mapping the ideas by cost and value, conversation starters are the quickest win: low cost, high value. The peer-driven app events add high value at a higher cost, and space segmentation is the larger, longer-term investment.

Cost vs. value matrix: conversation starter is low cost and high value; the peer-driven event app is high value at higher cost; space segment sits lower at high cost.

Reflection

Connection can’t be scheduled.

I went in expecting to design better events. The interviews kept pointing somewhere else: people connect through small, everyday moments when they feel safe to be themselves. That shifted our work from programming more activities to designing the conditions for connection, in the space, the app and the coffee line.