The future of workplace communications may not be another large-format display. According to Joan CTO and co-founder Luka Birsa, it could be a four-inch ePaper badge managed through the same platform that runs rooms, desks and visitors. An exclusive invidis background interview.
Joan Interview: From ePaper Pioneer to Workplace Platform
When Joan Workplace launched its first wireless ePaper meeting room display more than a decade ago, the idea was simple: take the battery life advantages of ePaper, eliminate cables, and replace the complex room-booking systems that dominated corporate offices at the time. Today, that same philosophy has resulted in the company’s smallest product yet: a 4-inch wearable ePaper badge.
But according to co-founder Luka Birsa, the new badge is less about hardware and more about the continuing transformation of Joan itself.
Bringing ePaper into the Workplace
The company that would later become Joan emerged from Visionect’s early experiments with ePaper technology, inspired by consumer products such as the Amazon Kindle. The founders believed that the unique characteristics of ePaper, ultra-low power consumption, excellent readability, and wireless deployment, could solve real workplace challenges.
Their first breakthrough came with wireless meeting room displays. At a time when many workplace systems were expensive, wired and often complicated to manage, Joan built a reputation around simplicity.
“We were the antithesis of the spaceship-like systems available at the time,” Birsa told invidis. “The focus was always on user experience and removing friction.”
The strategy resonated. Today, Joan serves around 5,000 customers worldwide, has shipped approximately 100,000 ePaper devices, operates in more than 100 countries, employs around 80 people, and generates more than €10 million in annual revenue.
The Workplace Changed. Joan Changed with It.
COVID fundamentally altered the workplace and, with it, Joan’s roadmap.
What began as a meeting-room management company expanded into desk booking, visitor management, employee communications, and workplace content management. The underlying mission remained unchanged: helping organizations create better workplace experiences.
“We want to improve the daily life of more than 10 million employees worldwide,” says Birsa. “It’s about removing friction from everyday workplace interactions.”
The expansion also marked an important strategic shift. While Joan became known for its elegantly designed hardware, the company’s center of gravity increasingly moved toward software.
The result is Joan Workplace, an integrated platform connecting meeting rooms, desks, visitors, digital signage, and employee communications. In that context, the new ePaper badge becomes just another endpoint within a much larger workplace ecosystem.
The Smallest Screen Managed by a CMS
Birsa sees the badge as a logical extension of that platform strategy. “The badge is the smallest screen we make, and it has the biggest job,” he says. “It knows who it belongs to, and it acts on that.”
Unlike traditional ID cards, the badge combines an ePaper display with Bluetooth and NFC functionality. Besides displaying names and credentials, it can serve as an access credential for doors, coffee machines, and other workplace systems.
The badge is fully integrated into Joan’s software stack and can be updated wirelessly. Users can cycle through different information screens using a button on the back of the device.
For Joan, the real innovation is not the display itself but the ability to manage wearable screens through the same workplace platform already used for room displays, desk booking and digital signage.
In Birsa’s words: “Our industry has spent a long time asking how big and how bright a screen can get. The more interesting question now is how many surfaces a building needs to show what’s true, and how few of them should need a cable.”
Three Markets, One Device
Joan has identified three primary use cases for the badge.
Visitor management is seen as the most immediate opportunity. Instead of printing disposable credentials, visitors receive a reusable wireless badge that updates automatically from the visitor-management platform.
Employee badges replace traditional plastic access cards with dynamic credentials that can display updated information and integrate into the broader workplace experience.
The third opportunity lies in events. Organizers can update attendee information, schedules or networking details in real time without reprinting badges. Joan believes the sweet spot will be events between 150 and 500 attendees, where badge collection and reuse remain manageable.
Design as a Competitive Advantage
While low-cost ePaper badges already exist in parts of Asia, Joan believes the opportunity in Europe and North America lies in delivering a polished enterprise-grade solution.
The company differentiates itself through design, security, support, and ease of use rather than competing purely on hardware costs.
That focus on design has become a defining characteristic of the brand. In 2026 alone, Joan received more than a dozen design awards across its portfolio, including Red Dot and German Design Awards. “Design and user experience are part of our DNA,” says Birsa.
Full Circle
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the badge launch is what it reveals about Joan’s future direction. The company started by selling ePaper hardware. Today, it increasingly talks about workplace workflows, employee experience, software integration, AI-driven content management, and frictionless communication.
In many ways, the badge brings the story full circle. What began as a company bringing ePaper into the workplace is increasingly becoming a workplace software company that happens to use ePaper exceptionally well. Joan is shifting from screens to experiences and from hardware to platform. As Birsa puts it: “The intelligence stays invisible. The display is where it becomes real.”