Lessonly HQ

Lessonly, a rapidly scaling tech software company needed a new place to house their expanding team. Their new space, a renovated historic school building in Indy's Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood, has many amenities, such as ample flex workspace choices, a large café & work lounge, a yoga studio, “pair pod” training rooms, a library, a mother’s lounge, showers and access to the popular Monon trail. Their mission is to help others “do better work”, and their space must do exactly that for themselves.

When your team is expanding quickly, you need a space where each square foot is maximized to its full potential. The design of Lessonly’s new headquarters made sure each area could flex and serve multiple uses. The centralized café & work-lounge was designed as the nexus -- encouraging casual and impromptu day-to-day collisions across departmental teams. Furniture, lighting, and floor level variety allow this space to adapt quickly from a lunch spot with co-workers, to pop-in meeting with full tech connectivity, to a weekly all-employee meeting space. Because Lessonly helps their customers “do better work” by using training software, the space was intentionally designed to ensure that their people could stay connected anywhere, whether at their desk, in the lounge, in a free-standing phone booth, or a conference space. This affords employees the choice to the location best for their particular task, may it be quiet focus work, team collaboration, or somewhere in between, enhancing both their overall productivity and satisfaction. As a company whose success hinges off internal collaboration, the layout of the space gives opportunities everywhere for people to connect, varying in shape, size, and privacy. Multiple “pair pods” - termed by their two-person screen-facing meeting style, allow Lessonly’s frequent small meetings to not book up their other conference spaces needed for larger group sizes. Knowing that productivity is highly influenced by overall health and wellness, the design also helps achieve the coveted balance of work and respite. Floods of natural light, indoor plant life and views to nature are carefully cadenced throughout each floor; while access to the adjacent trail, bike storage, a yoga room, showers, a nap room, and a mother’s room work in conjunction. These strategic amenities are aimed to drive team engagement, cross-departmental and cross-locational connectivity, and productivity.

Though originally a schoolhouse, the last several decades of this space’s life was lived as the instrument repair shop for all of Indianapolis Public Schools. There’s a salvaged baby grand piano that the team placed in the elevator lobby as a nod to this history, and a sign which was preserved in the stairwell which reads ‘Violin Repair upstairs’. Allowing the building’s history, including restoring and exposing its historic maple plank flooring, to serve as an undercurrent in the space promotes Lessonly’s value of authenticity. And, in encouraging creativity and wellness, Lessonly employees are invited to stop and tickle the ivories.

Originally starting as an inside joke, the llama quickly became Lessonly’s official mascot and is now affectionately known as Ollie Llama. It has become their icon for humility, hard work, and people smarts. Ollie is embedded everywhere in their marketing and communication and so it was only natural to extend this into their physical environment as well. His bold and varied presence in signage, custom art, trophy walls and on library shelves, reflects the playful and quirky nature of Lessonly’s brand and quietly reinforces the values their team holds near. Just like their brand’s digital expression, the new space pulls in their iconic bold yellow color palette, in small yet impactful doses. Raw, unfussy materials like sealed concrete floors, exposed ceilings, and finished plywood exude Lessonly’s casual and relaxed vibe. Integrated and understated digital displays at the entry give visitors a connection to the story and mission of Lessonly without feeling pretentious. Custom graphics with classic pair names like “Mac-n-Cheese" and “Thelma & Louise” were applied to all the pair pods along with other creative riffs such as “Calma Llama” for the nap room to remind people that the office doesn’t have to be stiff to get things done.

The best ways to engage employees is to a) equip them with the right resources b) give them choices in accomplishing their work, and c) make it fun and meaningful. This space helps them do all three better. The nexus of the layout gives employees easy access to its people resources, with ample opportunities for cross-pollination with co-workers beyond their immediate department. In addition, it offers physical resources such as technology access no matter where they are in the office and a plethora of work area choices all under one roof. Building on a culture of engagement, the space creates fun, interactive moments that give ownership and personalization back to their employees, like a Polaroid wall near the kitchen or the custom golden llama awards wall that celebrates, and puts on display, outstanding team members.