Litespace Coffee Chat

What I did

• Led end-to-end design of an AI-powered coffee chat feature.
• Identified social friction through qualitative research and internal testing.
• Owned the pairing model end to end, from the matching signals to how a match is presented.
• Designed the full scheduling flow, including the decline and reschedule paths.
• Partnered closely with engineering to iterate on the MVP.

Overview

Bridging the gap between structured meetings and casual interactions

Coffee Chat is the 0-to-1 feature of Litespace, an AI-powered enterprise platform for engagement in hybrid and remote workplaces. It pairs two people who would not otherwise meet, tells them why they were matched, and takes the social pressure out of accepting.

Problem

Remote teams lack casual social interactions

To improve team connection in hybrid and remote environments, I identified key challenges through observations, customer feedback, and teammate interviews. Three of them made this hard to design.

Research

Why existing tools fall short

To understand how others addressed casual interactions, I conducted a competitive analysis of Slack bots, virtual spatial platforms, and co-working tools.

Goals and constraints

Designing intentional connections with minimal social pressure

The rebrand from a green identity to a blue one was still in progress, and we had two weeks to design and ship. That scoped the MVP to one meaningful chat per week, and anything that added friction had to go.

Meaningful pairings

Explain the match, and people accept it

Users were more likely to accept a pairing when they understood why they were matched. I championed using the GPT-3 API to infer a connection from those lightweight signals and generate a plain-language explanation for each match.

The user flow

Remove the messaging, remove the drop-off

Coffee Chat removes messaging entirely, replacing it with default states, automated scheduling, and clear fallback paths.

What testing changed

Simplifying coffee chat's interface

Faced with a complex UI, I initially designed a multi-functional widget. User testing revealed its high cognitive load, leading me to divide it into two simpler widgets for availability and reasons, which received more positive feedback during internal A/B testing.

Optimizing meeting format selection

I explored letting users choose between virtual and in-person meetings, but A/B testing showed it caused delays and confusion. In-person meetings were rarely chosen in our remote and hybrid setting. We removed the selection to simplify scheduling and reduce cognitive load.

Final Design

One pairing a week, scheduled for you

Each week you get a pairing built from your Google Calendar availability, with shared interests and suggested topics to start on. It arrives set to "Going" by default, so nobody has to be the one who says yes. Once you both confirm, a Google Meet link lands on your calendars.

Handling chat declines without friction

If either person declines, or never responds, you both get a notification. No reason required. Asking for one would put the pressure back. Your next chat is scheduled in the following cycle.

Flexible scheduling for better availability

To reschedule, you pick from time slots the system recommends from your availability and theirs. Once they agree, the chat is confirmed.

No message thread to chase

If the other person proposes new times, you review them and pick one.

When none of their times work

You send back your own availability for them to review.

Design System

The identity was changing under the feature

With the identity mid-swap, there was nothing settled to design on. Building Coffee Chat on the system being retired meant shipping something stale on day one, and the one replacing it did not exist yet.

So the foundations had to come first. I worked with another designer to define the new color tokens and typography, then molecule-level components that balanced consistency with flexibility for different product needs.

Reflection

When the barrier is social, the design work is subtraction

Every decision that made Coffee Chat work was a removal. The match is explained so no one has to ask why they were paired. There is no message thread to negotiate, the default answer is Going so nobody has to be the first to say yes, and declining needs no reason. What looked like a matching problem was really about deleting each moment where someone had to expose themselves socially. Designing it mid-rebrand taught me the same lesson at the system level: build tokens and components, not finished screens, because those are what survive when the ground moves.