Ep 08 - User Experience in the Workplace with Elisa Rönkä

07/21/19 • 43 min

Episode 8 of the Citizen Centric podcast is now out! Workplace is still on the agenda as the latest workplace trends can really help us to understand more about user experience in a city. Elisa Rönkä from Siemens is a perfect person to talk to about this subject. She specializes in end user apps, IoT and emerging technology but she isn’t a fan of technology for technology’s sake. Her role is to look past that shiny new piece of technology and ask “but what does this do for me as a user, employee or citizen?” We talk about: - why the era of accepting friction in our daily life is over - how Elisa’s varied work history makes her the perfect person to question the experience delivered by new technology - why the best innovation occurs when people collaborate voluntarily and why that doesn’t normally happen in meeting rooms - why workplaces are a good place to study when aiming to understand user experience as employers are trying to keep up with apps like uber or justeat - why technology needs to delight us and not just function More about Siemens https://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/buildings/markets/smart-office.html

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Ep 07 - WeWork with Henrik Botten Taubøll

We continue our examination of the future of work and WeWork are a wonderful company to study. They have revolutionised the way people and companies work and they have a valuation of 47 billion dollars even though they are still only 9 years old. From the outside its hard to know if they are a company that offers flexible space for rent, that offers agile services, a technology company or is it all of the above? I speak to Henrik Botten Tauboll, who is the Director of Real Estate for WeWork Nordics, Baltics and Netherlands. We talk about - the latest definition of Proptech - WeWork’s plans for the Nordics - How they put humans at the centre of their designs - Why they design narrow corridors in their buildings - How they use data to bridge the gap in understanding the difference between what spaces people say they want and what spaces they really use - How they have different approaches for different cultures based on the data they have collected - How they provide variety, choice and freedom while keeping costs down - How if you create a great workplace then people want to stay there after work - Why they are focused only on the centre of cities and not on the suburbs - How they add pop up services to their buildings Link to the WeWork Global Impact Report https://www.wework.com/newsroom/posts/2019-global-impact-report