Hi Nills,

Thank you for your kind words and good questions :) We could not fit everything we wanted to say on the slides to keep i focused but we are always ready to share more.

1. How fixed do you see the employees in this system? Do they have regular contracts or do they apply for each job/project?

The best thing about this is that you can be either. The trend we are seeing with how people have been working with technology is leveraging it to have more control with how they spend their time. The idea is really all about controlling how one spends their time they deem productive. With that said, how we forsee this is that people can still opt to be permanent and have a contract in one virtual office/company or they can do it through a contracted project and they can be anywhere in the world. Another way is that people can even juggle 2-3 jobs online as a multiple-part timer because by not being physically in the office, the work flow is gonna become task based so finishing up tasks in one job and working on the next list in the second.

How do we know it works? In our studio we eventually became 80% remote (we only meet together in the office for 2 days). It was an easy adoption because of the maturity of team manager applications and communications but we also made mistakes initially and discovered that in order to not have any confusion, expectations were set, task lists were created and we were more careful with how we schedule project timelines by taking note of everyone's loads. This actually raised our productivity and we would be finishing projects a little more than half the time it would take if we would be working on the project in one office together.

Our team were more focused, more transparent, less distracted, more trusting of each other's capabilities thus creating an even more solid team.

1. Will there still be the need for a central office that manages the overheads and could facilitate the collaboration of the workforce? What could they offer so that this system runs smoothly?

2. How would the collaboration look like? Maybe you could include a project timeline showing the input and deadlines for various team members?

We want to answer these two at the same time because they are related to each other.

Yes of course, in fact we envision that you could actually build and customize the office set up. Of course, in a bigger organization, there would still may be a need for a main office (headquarters) managing local numerous hubs. Like Addidas HQ would still be connected with Addidas Regional offices and being online in fact may make connecting and collaborating less of an "I fly you out here" to "when is the best time for me to barge in your office online?

This honestly depends on how the organization or office is set up. Being online and having the ability to create your own virtual office/workspace just allows you now more options on how to make the system efficient based on how your organization is set up.

One thing we probably did not include in the slides is 'Centralizing Management Applications' like you can chat, do forums, video call, call, project management system, etc all in one. We have a lot of great applications out there but the problem is they are all separate from one another and do not work together seamlessly. We got inspired by the China application QQ that actually centralized the way people communicate and even 'play together'. Yes you can play with other QQ users in-real time. It also does everything from chat, calls, forums and even a profile space page like Facebook. Centralizing the basic ways people have been working and collaborating online ( Ie, chat, videocall, collaborative workspace like googleslides or docs) with each other and streamlining it all further is the base of this idea with an added human twist to it. (Explaining further)

So, We do understand that "the office in our pockets" sounds cool and all but how would the virtual office look like?

As we said in the slides that we were inspired by MMORPG games and that everyone has their own avatar in this virtual office. Employees and Bosses can have their own special avatars. Employees are there to grow their own skills and work with others to tackle problems while bosses, besides leading and managing the team to victory, they can execute certain gamified events for the employees or create goals (quests related to work) that would raise their ratings / skillsets online.

Explaining in more detail, right now, remote working as a trend is starting to become a normal. Even in our studio we are working towards Being 90% working remotely (last 10% is just for hanging and team building) but working remote for a long while now and talking through chats and seeing numbers or cards being moved across the screen is just getting too cold which is why we still do meet ups for planings and meetings at times. But what if we can see actual human avatars on our screens and we can see everyone talking and working together? A lot in our studio teams were big video game players before, we were fascinated at how people could put in so much emotions towards pixel avatar characters. If you have never played an MMORPG ( Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Online Games) before like ( World of Warcraft) you would probably have a hard time understanding and we did not understand it ourselves first on why we did have such a strong affinity with our avatars but remembering when we were young playing such games and we debated to a conclusion that maybe it is because we grew as our characters grew, working with other players and teaming up to solve dungeons together and raising each other's skills. MMORPGs ( straight from its name of Role Playing) is the most social virtual setting out there and this is how we got our answer.

It is obvious that being online and working online 100% is the future and it is what is happening right now but, of course, what could be next? As such, what if we can see a virtual love office full of our pixel avatars online? We wanted to still keep in control of our time as we enjoy it right now working remotely as a team yet we wanted that human touch like everyone else and this virtual office with our virtual avatar teams in our own pockets is our answer to that question.

We dont believe VR is the next thing for work simply because that it is kinda like working backwards, humans immersing themselves in a virtual world to work like humans when we are making strides as humans in the real world already collaborating with tools online and we focused on what is next for these tools we use or what is their next iteration to make working together online better.

So with the tools centralized into one for the team to work together and skinning it up with an actual virtual office setting full of collaborative tools with avatars goofing around or actually working on their desks to give that human factor to the tech is how we see the future of work.

Thanks Shao for sharing your thoughts and inspirations regarding your submission, you have clearly put a lot of thought into it and it turned out great.

Yours, Nils

Hi Denisse,

Glad you asked this, As we said in the slides that we were inspired by MMORPG games and that everyone has their own avatar in this virtual office. Employees and Bosses can have their own special avatars. Employees are there to grow their own skills and work with others to tackle problems while bosses, besides leading and managing the team to victory, they can execute certain gamified events for the employees or create goals (quests related to work) that would raise their ratings / skillsets online.

Explaining in more detail, we absolutely agree that, talking through chats and seeing numbers or cards being moved across the screen is just getting too cold which is why we still do meet ups for planings and meetings. But what if we can see actual human avatars on our screens and we can see everyone talking and working together? A lot in our studio teams were big video game players before, we were fascinated at how people could put in so much emotions towards pixel avatar characters. If you have never played an MMORPG ( Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Online Games) before like ( World of Warcraft) you would probably have a hard time understanding and we did not understand it ourselves first on why we did have such a strong affinity with our avatars but remembering when we were young playing such games and we debated to a conclusion that maybe it is because we grew as our characters grew, working with other players and teaming up to solve dungeons together and raising each other's skills. MMORPGs ( straight from its name of Role Playing) is the most social virtual setting out there and this is how we got our answer.

It is obvious that being online and working online 100% is the future and it is what is happening right now but, of course, what could be next? As such, what if we can see a virtual love office full of our pixel avatars online? We wanted to still keep in control of our time as we enjoy it right now working remotely as a team yet we wanted that human touch like everyone else and this virtual office with our virtual avatar teams in our own pockets is our answer to that question.