Two months ago we installed the very first tonari pilot, which connects two open areas in Frontier Consulting’s Osaka and Tokyo offices. After many conversations and research surveys, we wanted to share what we’ve learned so far!

Some highlights ↓

Being able to see a full life-sized body makes a really big difference for reading nuance & body language! A designer in the Osaka office mentions how cultural differences can make it difficult to read a coworker from Tokyo over applications like Zoom that only show the face.

Keeping tonari *always on* really helped people share more information across offices. Because there’s no disconnect button, conversations flowed more casually from one topic to the next. We heard a lot of “Oh yes, I wanted to ask…” and “By the way…” during our field studies.

More casual and serendipitous conversations meant that people got stuff done more quickly. A stalled email discussion would quickly get resolved in a conversation over tonari. People could quickly pull in other people needed to finalize a decision, without scheduling meetings

Frontier employees volunteered to be facilitators who organized events, happy hours, and other fun activities to help everyone get comfortable with tonari. It was awesome to see people across offices playing games or cheers-ing drinks across tonari.

Ultimately, culture and communication are not just technology problems--they’re human problems. But we’re really excited about how we’re seeing people use tonari so far and are looking forward to planning more quantitative studies for future pilots!

All the Frontier employees were super thoughtful and awesome in their interviews. You can read more about their experiences in the full research report here: https://medium.com/tonari/how-can-tonari-change-communication-and-culture-in-an-organization-f192536d697c