Maya is a 9-person design agency in the United Kingdom. Adam Telford and his team built their physical studio into something that felt like the brand: a small space they put real love and effort into, where clients walked in and immediately got what Maya was about. Then the pandemic hit and the studio went unused for months.
"We're a group of nine, used to bouncing ideas off each other all day. Suddenly we were stuck trying to figure out which link was for what meeting, and missing the vibe our studio had."
Adam can list the three pains exactly. Tool fatigue: too many links, too many apps. Lost identity: the physical studio felt like Maya, but Zoom looked like Zoom. And the diary problem.
"We were sick to death of everyone having different links for calls, everyone requiring a download. One person could get Zoom to work, another could get Teams to work, and it was always problems. I was fed up of having all these apps on my computer for calls. It's like, I use this to speak to one client."
"We were working in Slack, and we'd say okay, we need to have a conversation about this. Then in the calendar, everyone always books half an hour or an hour. Some people just book an hour meeting for whatever. Diary's filling up super quickly with realistically five-minute conversations."
A Maya client recommended Cosmos to Adam. He wanted to build something that felt like Maya, not like a video call tool.
Adam designed the space the way Maya designs everything. An open area where the design team sits around a table, the dev team has their own corner, and the marketing team works from a spot by the window. A private team room next to the main stand-up room. A conference room Adam tagged "welcome to my TED talk" that has hosted branding workshops with local design students. It is one approach to designing a Cosmos space for a team.
"It's not just some platform; it's our space now. It's where we work, chat, and throw ideas around just like back in the studio."
The Maya day starts in the same room every morning.
"I'll normally sit at a desk just so that I'm about if people want to chat as they come in in the morning. Hi, how are you, like you would in a normal studio. Then at 10 we have our morning stand-up. We start with a funny question, and then go through how the sprint is looking, how the day is looking."
After stand-up, the team distributes across the office. The design team heads to the tables, the dev team goes to the room next door, and some people pick less expected spots: behind a tree, on a rock, on a rug. They stay in listening mode all day, using proximity audio when they want to compare notes.
"Everyone's in listening mode, so it's not like you're being watched or listened to the whole time. But it does mean that you can just pop off and be like 'what do you think of this.' That's made a big difference."
The other constant is clients. Maya has four lockable client meeting rooms upstairs.
"The clients that we're working with all the time, we tell them we're meeting in meeting room three and they can make their own way there. It's super useful."
After nine months of an empty physical studio, Maya cancelled the lease. The team has the flexibility now to take a walk, take the dog out, come back when ideas flow again. That is harder in a studio.
"We weren't able to go back to our studio for like nine months. It was like, okay, no one's been there, we need to cancel the lease. The reality is that now if we tried to get a physical space and say people need to be in there even three days a week, I just can't see it happening."
The other outcome was unexpected. Maya's clients have started building Cosmos studios of their own.
"At least three of our clients have immediately gone away, set up their own Cosmos spaces, and invited us in. I think everyone will have a space like this."
"Cosmos has been a game changer for us, keeping us all on the same wavelength and keeping the energy up, even from home. It's the future of online working."
Adam Telford
Founder
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