Peloton HQ
Why
Peloton, renowned as an innovative exercise equipment and media company, is dedicated to connecting people globally through fitness, promoting personal excellence anytime and anywhere. My role in this transformative project involved collaborating with the talented team at A+I to develop the design for Peloton's New York Headquarters. This endeavor was not just about creating a space; it was about embodying Peloton's mission to inspire and facilitate peak physical and mental well-being through thoughtful design and technology integration.
What
The primary challenge of the Peloton HQ project was conceptualizing and designing a workplace capable of accommodating three times its existing capacity, without compromising on intuitiveness and user engagement. This ambitious goal demanded an innovative approach to spatial planning and design, ensuring that the expanded headquarters would remain as user-friendly and accessible as the original, even with its significantly increased scale.
How
To tackle this complex project, our methodology encompassed a comprehensive process starting from contextual inquiry to fully understand user needs and space dynamics. This was followed by wireframing to layout digital interfaces, and rapid prototyping to quickly bring our ideas to life. The iterative process of usability testing ensured that both the physical and digital designs were user-centric, efficient, and aligned with Peloton's vision and operational requirements.
Project Team: Phil Ward, Sohee Moon, Chris Shelley, Catalina Rivera, Hannah Lee, Anjali Patel, Aman Sinha
Awards: SARA National Design Awards Winner 2022, Fitwel Impact Award 2022 - Highest Scoring Project of All Time
Photograph by Magda Biernat
Pre Design
The architecture process is much like the double-diamond approach. We begin by kicking things off with an in-depth study of the user, Peloton’s staff, to understand their mission and future vision. To take this on, we observed their existing headquarters and interviewed an array of leadership, and staff to understand who they are, what they need, and how the headquarters can best serve them. In total, we interviewed 37 people and received 186 survey responses.
What did we ask?
Who is Peloton?
What does Peloton mean to the world?
What are the Peloton values?
What is the Peloton community?
How does Peloton work?
Our mission was to get the insider's perspective.
Peloton HQ, NY
What did we learn?
Peloton is a community of members and creators that constantly challenge but support each other to strive for better. The core of Peloton is Community. Peloton is a platform where every team contributes to the mission of providing the best end-to-end user experience.
What were the key takeaways from the data?
I. Communication is Complex
Frequent interactions within and outside a particular team/department.
Illustration depicting the level of interaction between different teams
II. You're Overbooked
Meeting room booking data for a month for different meeting rooms across various floors of the existing Peloton Headquarters. Data reveals that an average meeting room is booked 74% of the time.
Data revealing percentage time of booked slots for different meeting rooms
Applying Research
Design Strategy
Building upon the data collected, we held an office-wide workshop to iterate a series of possible design directions. After iterating further, we synthesized this process and landed on the concept of the vertical penthouse — a distribution of amenities to all floors rather than their current setup which reserves them on one floor.
Existing HQ penthouse on left vs distributed amenities across various floors of new HQ on right
From here, we began to develop the concept into more detail — iterating/producing 3D models, drawings, and renderings. Below builds upon the concept diagram above, it showcases a section render exploring materials, amenities, connections, and detailed design development.
Cross-sectional view of various floors of the new HQ
Brand Activation
Branding Concept
Various verticals were chosen within the project to activate the Peloton branding across the HQ. Branding elements were classified on the basis of their scale in the space and further subdivided into different elements that could suffice for Branding requirements.
Branding concept for signages across the new HQ
