Virtual Dialogue Web Platform
Root Inc.
The Virtual Dialogue Web Platform empowers Fortune 200 colleagues to foster organizational change through a captivating digital experience.
web
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mobile
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desktop
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embedded
embedded
Root Inc. works with companies to enact strategic organizational change. They help Global 2000 organizations build workforce skills, keep employees engaged, and connect each team member to their company’s strategies and culture. Root’s hallmark Learning Map© visually communicates the client company's direction with its workforce, traditionally through in-person, strategic discussions.
Transitioning to digital amid the rise of remote work, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Root Inc. envisioned a virtual counterpart for their Learning Maps to accommodate distant participants.
Coordinating Stakeholders
Phase 1: Embracing Digital Transformation
Root Inc. developed an initial prototype, then collaborated with Atomic Object to refine and launch a production-ready digital Learning Map. This initiative aimed to preserve the collaborative essence of their workshops in a digital format—favoring interactive engagement over conventional methods like email blasts or PowerPoint presentations.
The digital map, designed for simultaneous use by multiple participants, introduced features to enhance interactivity:
- Cursor Tracking: Visible cursor movements of participants navigating the map.
- Live Questions: Real-time responses and shared insights among users.
- Drag & Drop sorting: Interactive manipulation of elements with visible actions from others.
Root offered select clients demonstrations of the new tool’s capabilities, which were met with enthusiasm and curiosity. The first version of the application was released to 900 people.
The pandemic served as a rich classroom for Root’s leaders to glean how users interfaced with the new tool. After allowing the first version of the digital Learning Map© to gain feedback from client teams, Root again partnered with Atomic Object to develop a feature-rich second version of the map.
During the engagement, Root’s leaders adopted Atomic’s approach to agile software development best practices and grew its own team of product owners internally.
Technical Specs
Atomic designed the system architecture and wrote software and firmware for:
Phase 2: Developing a Full-feature Workshop Experience
With the Learning Map developed into a digital product, Root wanted to further help users dive into their organization’s strategy, financials, or processes with a second release. Among other features, they sought to create a kind of a virtual whiteboard, where everyone’s voice could be heard in a fun, engaging, and meaningful way.
Atomic’s Software Design Practice Lead in Ann Arbor, Bryan Elkus, led design work on the project. He saw the user experience of going through the Learning Map activities as a type of collaborative online challenge.
Under the guidance of Atomic's Software Consultant & Designer Bryan Elkus, the project emphasized collaborative user experiences, akin to an online group challenge, focusing on:
- Consultants facilitating onboarding, ice-breakers, and exercises.
- Client company employees engaging in organizational change.
Atomic Object Software Consultant & Developer Matt Soto his development work focused on delivering Root’s vision of polish, complex features, and emphasizing a business model around the digital product.
Root's VP, Nate Butki says Atomic’s consultative approach helped the project team uncover and address underlying needs rather than merely executing requests.
“Atomic didn’t want to just figure out what we wanted and give it to us—but rather figured out the need and helped us with it,” he said. “If they had listened to us and spit out exactly what we asked for, they would have only gotten 80 percent of it. Atomic’s team asked the questions and pushed us further.”
Technical Specs
Atomic designed the system architecture and wrote software and firmware for:
Phase 2: Developing a Full-feature Workshop Experience
With the Learning Map developed into a digital product, Root wanted to further help users dive into their organization’s strategy, financials, or processes with a second release. Among other features, they sought to create a kind of a virtual whiteboard, where everyone’s voice could be heard in a fun, engaging, and meaningful way.
Atomic’s Software Design Practice Lead in Ann Arbor, Bryan Elkus, led design work on the project. He saw the user experience of going through the Learning Map activities as a type of collaborative online challenge.
Under the guidance of Atomic's Software Consultant & Designer Bryan Elkus, the project emphasized collaborative user experiences, akin to an online group challenge, focusing on:
- Consultants facilitating onboarding, ice-breakers, and exercises.
- Client company employees engaging in organizational change.
Atomic Object Software Consultant & Developer Matt Soto his development work focused on delivering Root’s vision of polish, complex features, and emphasizing a business model around the digital product.
Root's VP, Nate Butki says Atomic’s consultative approach helped the project team uncover and address underlying needs rather than merely executing requests.
“Atomic didn’t want to just figure out what we wanted and give it to us—but rather figured out the need and helped us with it,” he said. “If they had listened to us and spit out exactly what we asked for, they would have only gotten 80 percent of it. Atomic’s team asked the questions and pushed us further.”
Phase 2: Developing a Full-feature Workshop Experience
With the Learning Map developed into a digital product, Root wanted to further help users dive into their organization’s strategy, financials, or processes with a second release. Among other features, they sought to create a kind of a virtual whiteboard, where everyone’s voice could be heard in a fun, engaging, and meaningful way.
Atomic’s Software Design Practice Lead in Ann Arbor, Bryan Elkus, led design work on the project. He saw the user experience of going through the Learning Map activities as a type of collaborative online challenge.
Under the guidance of Atomic's Software Consultant & Designer Bryan Elkus, the project emphasized collaborative user experiences, akin to an online group challenge, focusing on:
• Consultants facilitating onboarding, ice-breakers, and exercises.
• Client company employees engaging in organizational change.
Atomic Object Software Consultant & Developer Matt Soto his development work focused on delivering Root’s vision of polish, complex features, and emphasizing a business model around the digital product. Root's VP, Nate Butki says Atomic’s consultative approach helped the project team uncover and address underlying needs rather than merely executing requests.
“Atomic didn’t want to just figure out what we wanted and give it to us—but rather figured out the need and helped us with it,” he said. “If they had listened to us and spit out exactly what we asked for, they would have only gotten 80 percent of it. Atomic’s team asked the questions and pushed us further.”
Nate Butki, Root VP
Transforming User Insights into Winning Features
Feedback from initial users proved invaluable, guiding the development of the second version.
Root’s facilitators shared their own pain points with Atomic’s team, and they also gathered feedback from workshop participants to pass along—highlighting what they found confusing and what they enjoyed.
As with all software, Root had more ideas for features than ability to add them, so they worked with Atomic to develop a method of prioritizing features in a product backlog.
Led by Atomic’s Delivery Lead Justin Fitins, the group decided to focus on the features most important to Root’s facilitators where, they reasoned, the features could make the biggest impact for both types of users.
Bryan Elkus turned these prioritized feature ideas into clickable prototypes using Figma, and that helped generate buy-in within Root.
“With clickable prototypes, we could showcase what that would look like at a fraction of the cost of what it would take to implement it,” he said. “It helps the client visualize where the product could go in an affordable way.”
Soto says that after a series of design workshops showcasing possible directions for the app, Root’s team started to see what was achievable which led to exciting ambitions.
Taste-testing the Product in the Field
Delivering A Great Product and An Empowered Team
By getting to share their decades’ experience with agile practices, Atomic’s team got to watch the counterparts at Root develop new skills over the course of the second engagement.
Soto says he loved watching Root’s inherently collaborative culture adopt the agible practices they were learning.
“After a few months, they loved how easy and smooth it was to make last-minute changes, to pivot in another direction, and use feedback to spend their time where it was most impactful,” he said.
Root’s Jared Page says the agile approach to product design, development, and management he saw during the engagement had a profound impact.
“One of my favorite things about this project is that everyone got better—better at our jobs and better with communication; it just feels cool,” he said. “Sometimes you work for a year and don’t know if you’ve improved but everyone could look back on this project and say they’ve improved. This project changed the way I will work forever.”
Product Success in a Nutshell:
• Digitized analog workshop experience that is actively generating revenue in the market
• Client came back to build on the success of an early, minimal engagement
• Improved agile processes at company, identified and trained a new software leader in organization
This project changed the way I will work forever.
Coordinating Stakeholders
A Partnership with a Storybook Ending
The team’s careful project management, client communication, cutting-edge architecture, and cohesive design strategy helped the team ship the product on time and on budget.
Reflecting back on the multi-year, high-profile project, Robinson said Atomic helped his company arrive at a special moment in time.
“We'd never done anything this big. Ever,” he said. “We’re live across all the major pillars Atomic said they would deliver on. It was delivered on time, on budget, to expectation, live. Not three or four milestones late with people leaving and the platform half-baked and full of bugs.”
StoryLoom began open-beta in December 2022. A global launch is scheduled for the spring of 2023.
“We’ve been given a rare opportunity," said Robinson, "to find success by chasing opportunities Starship Enterprise-style: going where people aren’t—pushing boundaries.”
The Atomic Team
Here are some of our current Atoms who worked on this project. Click their photo to read their bios!
Project domain(s)
web
web
mobile
mobile
desktop
desktop
embedded
