01
Time
03.2022 - 07.2022
Team
Michelle Bauch Xinyi Wang
An AI assistant concept for hybrid work, designed in 2022 before AI assistants became mainstream. A university thesis project about how distributed teams stay connected to their company culture.
01
When workplaces went remote, companies solved the information problem. Meetings moved online and documents moved to the cloud. The belonging problem stayed unsolved. Employees remained productive while quietly losing their connection to colleagues and company culture. New hires were onboarded without ever feeling they had arrived.
Our thesis asked what it takes to preserve a sense of belonging when work is hybrid, and how much of that technology can carry.
02
We interviewed employees across five levels of home-office experience, from first-timers to fully remote veterans, along with HR professionals managing remote-work policies. To ground the findings, we partnered with a project manager at a large company and reconstructed a typical remote workweek, hour by hour, to see where the friction actually occurs.
The pattern was consistent. Communication tools keep information flowing, but they don't replace the informal moments where belonging is built: the corridor chat, the shared lunch, the quick question at a colleague's desk.
03
The obvious solution would have been another digital communication tool. We rejected that direction. The research showed the problem was the loss of informal, physical, human moments, and a new chat app cannot restore those.
Instead, we designed Ina as an assistant that operates across analog and digital touchpoints. It books you into a coworking space where colleagues already work, arranges a welcome package delivered by a nearby teammate, and builds a 15-minute casual buffer into online meetings. We also gave Ina human-like characteristics, a deliberate choice, because genuine interpersonal connection was exactly what technology alone could not replicate.
Within our two-person team, I led the visual, interaction and motion design, and translated our research into visual form: the service blueprint and the analysis diagrams that turned interview findings into a designable system. The human-like decision also landed on my desk. Ina's personality had to come through in how it moves, responds, and pauses.
04
Analog: an onboarding box delivered by a nearby colleague, turning a new hire's first day into a first connection; coworking-space booking that clusters colleagues who live close to each other.
Digital: a digital canteen with company-subsidised food delivery; meeting buffers for informal conversation; an ask-for-help function that routes quick questions to the right available person instead of interrupting everyone.
Underneath the scenarios sits one framework: spaces for connection, technology as a bridge rather than a replacement, and company culture as the layer that holds it together.
Title
One line to describe the vibe.
Title
One line to describe the vibe.
Title
One line to describe the vibe.
Title
One line to describe the vibe.
05
We designed Ina in 2022, before AI assistants entered everyday work. Some of it has aged well. Workplace AI assistants are now real products, and the coordination tasks we imagined for Ina are exactly what they do. What has aged even better is the constraint we identified: AI can coordinate connection, but it cannot substitute for it. The boundary between what should be automated and what must stay human is now a central question in AI product design. It is the question this thesis taught me to ask first.
