Ryan CoughlinMainer, designer, and fly fishing fanatic
The Robin indoor map shown on a wall kiosk, a laptop browser and a phone, with an email about a desk reservation.

Interactive Indoor Maps for Modern Workplaces

I designed Robin’s indoor map platform that helped the business scale to enterprise customers by visualizing their workplace.

Type
Design Delivery
My Role
Design Lead
Year
2018 - 2022 (Cont'd iterations)

As Robin sold to enterprise customers, we faced a new challenge: designing a booking and navigation tool suitable for these complex workplaces. This led to the development of our indoor mapping platform.

In my role as Design Lead, my key contributions were:

  • Concept exploration, ranging from practical to futuristic ideas.
  • Collaborating closely with co-founders and CEO to define product vision and strategy.
  • Coordinating with Engineers to plan and execute the project's development.
  • Balancing design choices with technical feasibility and project scope.

Throughout the years, the map continually evolved, adapting to the needs of our enterprise customers.

LEARN AND UNCOVER CUSTOMER NEEDS

Users in large offices struggled to find people, places and things

As Robin's customer base grew, so did their needs. Customers had upwards of hundreds of desks and conference rooms per floor. The existing mapless solution did not scale to meet the needs of our new customer segment. Primary tasks such as finding where a colleague sits and looking for an available meeting room became difficult.

Two earlier web screens side by side: a list of bookable meeting rooms with time slots, and a list of desk pods with avatars.Four earlier phone screens: a list of available rooms, a room detail page, a desk reservation sheet and a pick-a-desk list.

Before screenshots of the product. List views were used as the primary experience.

USER RESEARCH

Users referred to outdated, coffee-stained printed maps on their desks.

A PM, Co-founder and I conducted research with customers. Many of them shared floor plans on those calls allowing me to understand how complex their floors are – these are packed with amenities, desks, conference rooms, open areas and more.

A stack of customer floor plans, some colour-coded by department and some drawn as detailed CAD layouts.

Example floor plans from customers, typically provided as CAD exports or with annotations from their facilities teams.

Key findings

  • Users would have printed maps annotated with markers to show where things and people were located in the office.
  • Workplace admins also used multiple printed copies to explore resource allocation; often getting lost or covered in coffee stains (true!)
  • Floor plans even printed proved to be such an easy way to understand where you currently are and where a particular room is.
  • The current solution had decent usability in smaller offices.

SOLUTION

Bring customer floor plans into the product as real-time interactive maps

Everyone understands maps—they're our go-to for navigating unknown terrain, and now users have a familiar mental model to experience their office.

The final solution converted customer maps into interactive and real-time maps. The map utilized an existing room scheduling API and visualized that as a map layer.

A floor map of the Robin office with available rooms in green, a booked room in orange, an in-use room in red and desks along the middle.

Map of the Robin office using the map solution. This map was a core "ingredient" that was implemented across other platforms.

SYSTEM THINKING

Robin's new foundational ingredient to the platform

From design patterns to engineering decisions, the map was built as its own platform. This approach enabled us to move quickly and ensure a consistent, predictable experience across various platforms.

One floor map at the top with arrows leading down to the phone app, the kiosk, the web app and a reservation email.

BUILD PREDICTABILITY ACROSS PLATFORMS

Primary use cases for navigation and booking

The map solution was designed around primary use cases uncovered from research. Users wanted a visual aid to connect the what with the where.

Primary use cases

  • Find and book meeting rooms and desks
  • See where your upcoming reservations are located
  • See where coworkers sit.
  • Understand what’s nearby (customer offices were huge and the solution helped users make large offices feel personalized).
The web app showing a list of meeting rooms with booking times beside the floor map.
Map implemented into web was primarily used for planning and scheduling in the future
Three phone screens of the floor map: a desk owner's card, a desk reservation sheet and a meeting room booking sheet.
Mobile app, primarily used by users for on the go booking
A dark-mode floor map on a wall kiosk with a search box, a legend and a floor picker.
Map on large interactive kiosks, setup in entrances and lobbies.

MAP CONVERSION

From static to real-time interactive maps

An operational component of this product was getting customer maps into the product. It looked like:

  1. Submit floorplan: Customers typically provide office floorplans in static formats like PNG or PDF.
  2. Convert to SVG: Our map designers then converted floorplans into SVG.
  3. Make the map true to life: Customers build out floors by adding desks, meeting rooms, points of interest, and other annotations, bringing their physical workplace into a real-time map. Think Figma meets lightweight CAD software.
A detailed black and white floor plan on the left beside the same floor as a simple blue outline map on the right.
An empty office floor outline in light grey showing walls, rooms and a stairwell.
A single green desk, then a group of desks, then a floor map with desk groups laid out across it.

CONCLUSION

Reminder to think big and build small

It was one of the coolest projects I've worked on at Robin, and I learned a lot from it. This map continues to be a selling point for purchasing Robin, and maps are part of every customer who is onboarded.

The success of designing the map as a versatile platform enabled a self-serve experience. Workplace admins can now independently build and manage floor plans using our map.

A huge shout-out to the incredible team of designers, engineers, and product colleagues I worked alongside to make this possible. 👏🏻