In a perfect world, every workplace would fit, hand in
glove, with its workers: desks would be occupied in an optimally efficient way;
meeting rooms would never be under- or over-booked; no one would be too hot or
too cold and that statement staircase would produce those “chance encounters”
to boost the productivity of collaboration-hungry knowledge workers.
It’s a great idea but is it always the truth? Outcomes don’t
always match expectations, and people don’t always use buildings in the
expected way. To minimise this, however, many practices like ourselves are now
taking a more rigorous, practical approach to workplace design, which relies on
extensive front-end research.
Hi Design, whose clients include BBA, Handelsbanken and
Heathcoat Fabrics, work differently. We focus on space usage – the creation of
environments for optimum business effectiveness. This is what most workplace
designers mean by EBD – systematic up-front research that takes a lot longer
than the typical amount of work needed to fulfil a brief, but which results in a
space based on what’s actually happening, rather than what the CEO might tell
you is happening, or what a designer might be able to glean from a few
walk-throughs and staff interviews.
“We would normally do a study of 4 to 8 weeks, where we
don’t do a single design move; all we do is assess who the client is. By the
end of it we have a better understanding of how these people work than the
people themselves,” says Susan, Director of Hi Design. This encompasses
interviews with those at management level; an online staff questionnaire that
includes questions about which of their colleagues they interact with, how much
of their day they spend in meetings or out of the building; and standardised,
structured observation about how many people use the tea points, for example,
or are at their desks at any one time. Susan says that it was initially hard to
persuade clients on tight budgets and timescales that it would take weeks just
to assess their needs, but with a portfolio of successful projects our three
stage approach - ‘discover, design, deliver’ simply works!
