Thursday
Reimagining a new way for remote teams to socialize, connect, and build a strong culture. Beyond video calls
Details
What's the gap?
With the future of work going remote, everyone was busy building tools to make ‘work’ better. But what about everything else? Casual chats, coffee breaks, and game sessions with the team?
What was my role?
I was the founding designer and led product and brand design for Thursday.
Goals
Helping remote teams build a strong culture
1
Why does socialising online feel so awkward?
2
How do we design for spontaneity when everything is structured and scheduled?
3
How might we create an experience that feels as close to in-real-life socializing?
Research
What's going on in the world of remote work?
Remote work made us more productive. However, the Great Resignation showed us that something was breaking. People were connecting to their work, but were disconnected from each other.
We interviewed 25+ remote workers to understand why.
Top Three Insights
Relying on video conferencing tools for remote socializing
Unequal participation dominated by outspoken individuals
Difficulty for organizers to regularly host engaging socials
Two users, two different problems
Our research kept pointing to two groups experiencing remote socials very differently. One dreading them, and the other struggling to run them.
Process
Rethinking Remote Socials
Our research had made things clear and pointed out three core problems:
Unequal Participation
Designing interactions that allow for everyone to participate in the social.
Group activities
- Team building with a twist
Icebreakers
- getting rid of the awkward silences
Difficulty Organising
Making it easy for hosts to schedule, host and reflect on team socials.
Summaries
- to keep an eye on how well your org is engaging
Quick start
- Removing all hinderances from starting socials
Customisability
- every team is different
Rigid Video Calls
Turning passive participation to active engagement.
Quick start
- Removing all hinderances from starting socials
Polls
- Turning normal talking affordances to interactive experiences
Shared experiences
- Watching movie, listening to music together
Discussion topics
- Steering conversations to be more inclusive and thoughtful
Diverse activities
- you'll never be bored again
With these ideas, we prototyped extensively. From Figma prototypes to wizard-of-Oz-esque trials of our concepts.
In under three months, we launched our beta.
Building in Public
We launched our beta publicly. On Twitter and LinkedIn, we sent public invites for everyone to join our first social. It was a massive risk, but also a huge opportunity to stress-test and get real feedback from real users.
Solution
Real conversations happen in small groups
Socializing is more effective in small groups. However, splitting people apart without a shared space didn't feel like a team anymore.
Real-life socializing
Online socializing
Online spaces that feel like a room
We wanted to find a balance between the rigidity of Zoom that makes it ineffective for social events and the complexity of tools like Gather Town that make it cumbersome.
Spatial
Simple
Speed
Zoom
Spatial
Simple
Speed
Gather Town
Spatial
Simple
Speed
Thursday
What if moving through an online space was as simple as moving your cursor? Usercards let you do exactly that. Move around a room, cluster with people, and drift between conversations.
harshit ☕
Usercard
Lounge is Thursday's shared space, like a real office lounge. Move your cursor to move through the room, everyone's presence is felt.
Lounge in Thursday
Not everyone socializes in the same way. Some people want face time, others prefer typing, and some just want to react with an emoji and vibe. Lounge was designed with multiple ways to participate, so no one gets left out.
Ephemeral chat & reactions
Hop on stage for facetime
Move around the lounge
Socializing works better when you're having fun
Lounge breaks out into smaller groups that we call mixers, with one goal: to maximize conversations!
Every mixer was thoughtfully designed with its own concept, goals, and nuances.
Normal would you rather
Would you rather In Thursday
The interactions were designed to make you feel as if you are not interacting with a screen. For example: instead of pressing a button to select an option in "Would You Rather", you actually move your video card to that side, similar to how you would if you were playing this game in real-life in a room.
Various Mixers in Thursday
Hosting without the headache
Hosts always found it tough to schedule, organize, and manage remote socials. We made their jobs easier with our dashboard. One click to schedule socials, templates to pick different activities, and a Slack bot that invites the team and shares highlights of the social afterward.
Scheduling a social, made simple with templates.
Thursday Slackbot sends social summaries
Lounge, Mixers, and Dashboard — together, these three pieces gave remote teams something they'd been missing. Remote socials that people look forward to.
A quick peek inside Thursday
Result
Winning Product of the Year Award
In under two years, Thursday became the go-to platform for over 1,000 remote teams—hosting 10,000+ socials and earning Product Hunt's Product of the Year (Golden Kitty) award.
More importantly it was loved by all its users:
“ A lot of tools have tried to create the energy that Thursday has, but I don't think that anyone has come close to what Thursday is doing. ”
Sarah Park
Head of people, Geneva
