Blog

Joan AI Is Now in Microsoft Teams!

Joan — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 13:39:35 GMT

You know the drill. You want to come in on Thursday to catch your team, so you check one calendar to see who's in, another tab to find a free desk, a separate tool to sort parking, and a form somewhere to register the client who's visiting at two. None of it is hard. All of it is friction. And by the time you've done it, the momentum you had is gone.

There's a simpler way now. It lives right where your team already works. Just ask.

What Is an Asset Reservation System and Why Your Company Needs One

Joan — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:15:00 GMT

Most offices have more bookable resources than employees know about: spare monitors, adjustable desks, conference rooms with good acoustics, parking spots near the entrance, lockers on the right floor. An asset reservation system puts all of it in one place and makes it bookable.

Desk ownership is largely gone. According to CBRE's 2024 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment Survey, only 40% of companies still maintain a 1:1 employee-to-desk ratio, down from 56% the year before, and no organization now targets one desk per employee as a default. Shared desks, shared equipment, shared parking — the office is a pool of resources, not a collection of personal spaces. Without a system to manage that pool, things get double-booked, abandoned, or forgotten entirely.

How Thuisvester Made Space For What Matters

Joan — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:48:30 GMT

Thirteen meeting rooms. A hundred and eighty people. And a booking system that had been quietly causing friction for years.

Thuisvester is a social housing organisation based in North Brabant, the Netherlands. Their mission is straightforward: providing affordable housing. Their headquarters is busy, collaborative and meeting-heavy, and for years they relied on Microsoft Outlook's room-booking functionality. It worked, after a fashion. But it also produced a familiar set of problems.

Two Years of Manual Work Fixed in an Afternoon

Luka Birsa — Thu, 28 May 2026 07:48:21 GMT

I have a bad habit of measuring things too quickly.

Joan makes tools that help people work better. Which means, in a slightly uncomfortable way, we are always being measured against our own product promise. So when AI tools started getting genuinely powerful, not just for basic tasks, but for connecting systems, automating workflows, building things from scratch, there was quiet internal pressure to figure out what that meant for us first.

Gregor, one of our product owners, put it plainly at a team meeting: we should help people actually use these tools, not just talk about them. We ran two workshops, both led internally by colleagues who knew our tools and our daily friction, and then gave teams a full day to put what they had learned into practice.

So when I sat down with our marketing director to talk through how it had all landed, I was half-expecting a rundown of tools built and hours saved.

What she said instead surprised me.

"For me, the biggest wow effect was when someone walked me through the process. I had been doing things in a very limited way. And then they showed me what was possible, and I thought, is this really possible? I had no idea."

She was not talking about a tool. She was talking about what she had believed about herself.

P.S. Let's connect on LinkedIn!

Joan 13 Pro Wins Red Dot Design Award 2026. Our Fourth Red Dot in 10 Years.

Joan — Tue, 26 May 2026 11:00:57 GMT

Some achievements feel bigger than a trophy.

Joan 13 Pro has received the Red Dot Design Award 2026. It marks our fourth Red Dot Design Award in ten years — a milestone that means even more because it reflects something deeper than recognition itself.

Consistency.

Over the last decade, every Joan product generation we introduced has earned a Red Dot award — from our first recognition in 2016, through the next generation in 2018 and 2022, to Joan 13 Pro today. Not because we design for awards. Because we design for workplaces that deserve technology that performs exceptionally, feels effortless to use, and belongs in beautifully designed spaces.

"Winning our fourth Red Dot Award in ten years reinforces something we deeply believe at Joan: exceptional workplace technology should never force a compromise between performance and design."

- Rok Zalar, CEO of Joan Workplace

Award-Winning By Design: The Full Record Of Joan 13 Pro Recognition

Joan — Mon, 25 May 2026 12:21:20 GMT

When Joan 13 Pro launched, the goal was simple: build a room booking display that doesn’t compromise. Not on design. Not on reliability. Not on the everyday experience.

The awards weren’t the goal. But they’ve become a clear signal of what that approach delivers.

The latest recognition — the Red Dot Product Design Award 2026 — marks our fourth Red Dot in ten years. And it joins a growing list that tells a consistent story.

Here’s the full record.

The Future of Integrated Experiences: Joan at InfoComm 2026

Joan — Thu, 21 May 2026 08:12:27 GMT

From 17-19 June, Joan heads to InfoComm 2026 at the Las Vegas Convention Center to showcase a new generation of connected workplace experiences.

As offices evolve, expectations around the workplace are changing with them. Employees no longer interact with a single tool or isolated system during the workday. Every touchpoint, from arriving at the office to booking a room, finding a desk, navigating the building, or accessing information, is becoming part of one continuous workplace experience.

That shift is what Joan is bringing to InfoComm 2026.

Instead of focusing on disconnected tools, we’re demonstrating how integrated workplace experiences create more intuitive, responsive, and efficient environments for everyone who walks through the office.

Your Employees Aren’t Disengaged. They’re Scared.

Luka Birsa — Thu, 14 May 2026 11:56:48 GMT

53% of employees say an inefficient workplace would be enough to push them out the door.

It’s a stat I stumbled upon in the recent report by WORKTECH Academy and SPS, which surveyed 679 office workers across eight global markets.

I know what happens next. Someone in the leadership team reads that number and creates a new KPI or a quarterly pulse survey. Or even worse, a task force. Something that will track more numbers, more graphs, more signals, more dashboards. All in the name of efficiency.

That's the wrong instinct.

If half your people are telling you the workplace doesn't work, you don't need a better way to track the problem.

You need to fix the workplace.

P.S. Let’s connect on LinkedIn!

The Phone Call That Cost £500 Million

Luka Birsa — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:28:01 GMT

I fell down a rabbit hole of videos a while back. People putting on a high-vis vest, picking up a clipboard, and walking straight into stadiums, office buildings, film sets. No badge check. No questions. Just confidence and the right props.

While everyone in the comments laughed, Scattered Spider was taking notes.

In February 2025, they did the same thing, just over the phone. Called M&S's IT help desk, said they were an employee, asked for a password reset and the help desk gave it to them. That was the door. The £300 million in lost profit came after.

P.S. Let’s connect on LinkedIn!

Sustainable Screens Shaping the Future of Corporate Environment

Joan — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:45:20 GMT

The office used to be simple. A desk, a chair, a coffee machine that was always empty. Information lived in your inbox, on printed handouts, or, more often than not, nowhere at all. You asked a colleague. You checked a board. You guessed.

That world is gone. But the infrastructure meant to replace it hasn't quite caught up.