Joan Workplace Turns EPaper Hardware Into a Profitable Platform

By Amara Osei

In a Pulse 2.0 interview, Visionect Co-Founder and CTO Luka Birsa said Joan Workplace generates more than €10 million in annual revenue and is a “healthy, profitable and growing company.” Birsa said Visionect raised outside funding in its early years.

In a Pulse 2.0 interview, Birsa said the platform combines wireless ePaper devices with software for meeting-room booking, desk reservations, visitor management and digital signage, all managed from one backend. He said all four functions appear on wireless ePaper displays.

How did Joan Workplace begin?

Birsa traced Joan to early ePaper experiments, including the technology behind Amazon Kindle. He said low power use, readability and cable-free operation solved workplace problems; Visionect's first product was a wireless meeting-room display meant to replace expensive, wired booking systems. He said the company prioritized user experience and removing friction.

Birsa said Visionect initially built ePaper technology for others and published product ideas. A proposed display showing whether a meeting room was free drew industry interest and confirmed real demand.

Birsa said Visionect used Kickstarter while hardware crowdfunding remained mostly for large companies. Customers paid months before the display was ready and stayed through production, making that response the company's key turning point. He called the growth from a small engineering team to a customer-focused company his favorite measure of progress.

What changed after COVID?

Birsa called COVID the biggest challenge because offices changed almost overnight. He said staying with meeting rooms would have forced Joan to shrink, so Visionect expanded into desk booking, visitor management and workplace content.

“The centre of gravity moved from hardware to software, and that move is what made products like the badge possible,” Birsa said. He said the mission remained better everyday workplace experiences, while the difficult period accelerated development and redefined Joan as a unified platform.

What does Joan sell?

Birsa said Joan manages meeting rooms, desks, visitors and digital signage through one software platform and wireless ePaper displays. Its newest device, the Joan ePaper badge, is the smallest screen Visionect makes: a reusable 4-inch, four-colour badge that updates over Bluetooth instead of being reprinted and runs about seven weeks on a rechargeable battery.

One badge can serve as an employee ID, event badge or visitor pass. Its NFC chip opens doors where the access-control system supports it, while customers rebrand it through a backend template.

Birsa said every other Joan display belongs to a room, desk or wall, while “the badge belongs to a person.” People join, change teams and leave, he said, so Visionect built a platform that updates access without reprinting cards.

How does hardware fit the software strategy?

Customers told Visionect, “facilities prints them, HR asks for them, security owns the door readers, and nobody owns the whole process,” Birsa said. The device remains simple; the platform coordinates workflows and integrates with existing systems.

The badge shares Joan's platform with room displays and signage. Birsa said most effort now goes into integrations and the connection between devices and the backend.

Birsa leads product and growth teams and oversees security and artificial intelligence inside Visionect. He said the company is ISO 27001 certified and that he has spent more than 10 years building low-power ePaper devices and their software.

What milestones has Joan reached?

Birsa cited four principal milestones:

• He said Joan has won four Red Dot Design Awards in 10 years, and every product it has launched has won a design award.
• He said around 100,000 ePaper devices have shipped to around 5,000 customers in more than 100 countries.
• He cited long product life and an almost zero failure rate.
• He said the Joan ePaper badge launched on 20 October 2026 in more than 90 countries.

Birsa said Visionect moved from supplying ePaper solutions to others to focusing fully on Joan and building what customers requested. He believes the badge will redefine the company's offering and market position.

How are customers using Joan?

Birsa said employees at PwC Norway once ignored a paper desk-booking system and used jackets to mark desks. He said Joan desk booking and Zens occupancy sensors now automate bookings across 4 buildings, 16 floors and 1,100 desks.

Birsa said employees can reserve ahead or sit at a free desk, which the sensor books automatically. “The most important change is that you do not need to do anything,” Nina Ottesen, who runs facility operations, said. Joan's data also tells cleaners which desks were used, avoiding unnecessary cleaning.

Birsa said University Children’s Hospital Zurich opened a new hospital in November 2024 with open-plan areas for doctors instead of traditional offices. Hundreds of Joan devices outside treatment and meeting rooms show live availability, sync with Outlook and let staff book on the spot without hunting for a laptop, he said.

The hospital won the Joan Future of Work Award 2025. “The minimalistic design matches our special architecture perfectly,” Application Manager Adnan Jakupovic said.

Birsa said Takeaway.com used Joan to end the daily hunt for free meeting rooms. Weekly room-use reports and automatic cancellation of unattended bookings exposed “ghost meetings,” freed rooms and made meetings more efficient. “Due to simplicity, low cost, and the ease of use, we chose Joan,” Functional Application Manager Dewi Siemerink said.

How does Joan differentiate itself?

Birsa said Visionect competes on design, security, support and ease of use, not the lowest hardware price. He said its unified platform gives IT teams one vendor, one integration and one security model instead of several point solutions.

Low power use and cable-free installation let Joan place screens where conventional displays cannot go without an electrician. Birsa said the company competes on the effort required from users and workplace operators, not on hardware price alone.

Where does Joan go next?

Birsa said Joan's goal is to improve the daily working life of more than 10 million employees worldwide. He said the next phase moves from screens to experiences and from hardware to platform through workflows, integrations and AI-driven content management.

Birsa said AI gives teams new ways to serve customers better. He argued the industry should focus on how many surfaces a building needs to show what is true and how few require cables, not on bigger, brighter screens. The badge's rollout in more than 90 countries puts that hardware-to-platform strategy at its broadest scale yet.