How to Redesign Your Office Design a better space through user research

Transcription

1 How to Redesign Your Office Design a better space through user research

2 Design your space with confidence In terms of office space, many companies try to fit into the space they have, rather than creating a space that s designed around their unique needs. Visualhero is a design studio that works on everything from startup and business strategy to branding and user experience design. When we outgrew our space, we approached our office redesign just like we approach any project: with curiosity, passion and a commitment to doing what s best for the user. We re excited to share this process with you for your own office redesign or other design project! What you ll learn in this document Approaching your redesign with this user-focused methodology, we promise you a few things: Your space will be well suited to the unique needs of your team. We ll help you unearth the things your team really values in an office space and rank them in importance so you can prioritize appropriately. Your team will be actively engaged throughout the process. We re all familiar with receiving a criticism or suggestion for improvement after a project is complete and it s too late to make the change. This process mitigates that risk so everything is on the table as you go. The process won t be perfect! Remember, design is always a little messy and that s okay. Trust the process and know that user research will help you make the best decisions along the way.

3 Phase One: Define your customer To properly design a space (or anything for that matter!), start by learning what s most important to your customers. The customer for your office space could be better classified as your stakeholders, or the people who care what your office looks like and how it works. For our space, we identified our stakeholders as our employees, the teams they work with on projects, and our customers who are often in our space. Phase Two: What matters to your stakeholders? Does it matter that your office is close to a Starbucks? Or is it more important that you have a bike rack? The only way to find out is to ask. Try conducting a card sorting exercise with your stakeholders. The cards in this exercise each represent a factor or variable in your office redesign. When we conducted this for our own office, the cards said things like: Collaboration Space, Proximity to Lunch Spots, Private Phone Space. In total, we had 15 cards and performed this exercise with each of the Visualhero team members and a few select clients.

4 Remember: Repeat this exercise with a representative group of each of your stakeholders. You can download our card sorting cards to give it a try. Designate one person on your team to record the answers in a spreadsheet. This person should make a column for each card and record each stakeholder s ranking of that card. Phase Three: Visualize the data The best way to communicate your office needs to an architect or designer is through some kind of visual artifact. This will allow everyone on the project to work from the same document when they are considering your space needs Collaboration Avg: 1 You: 1 / Company: 1 / Client: 1 2 Project Space Avg: 3 You: 2 / Company: 4 / Client: 3 2 Culture A You: 4 / Com Here is an example of the document we created at Visualhero. We used this throughout the project to share our findings with our architect, general contractor and interior designer. We recommend creating an Average Rank Number for each of your cards from the card sorting exercise. From there, create a document that visually shows what people care about in your new office. Findings: By doing this, we learned that Collaboration Spaces were incredibly important to all stakeholders. We also learned that proximity to food and beverages wasn t as important as we thought it would be! Phase Four: Tour an office or two Accountablility Avg: 4.66 You: 3 / Company: 3 / Client: 8 Accessability Avg: 7.33 This is a fun phase. Take a team member or two and look at some offices that function similarly to yours. This part was critical to our redesign and reminded us of the importance of a couple quiet phone call spaces. While most of our team didn t rank phone call space very high, a few roles at Visualhero involve a decent amount of phone time and no one wants to talk loudly in the middle of Solitude an open office You: 7 / Company: 10 / Client: Avg: You: 13 / Company: 8 / Client: 7 6 Technology Avg: 5 You: 5 / Company: 6 / Client: Cost Avg: 9.33 You: 9 / Company: 5 / Client: Break/Lounge Area Avg: 9.33 You: 11 / Company: 11 / Client: Coo Av You: 8 / Com 9 Kitchen/Br Av You: 10 / Com 12 User A You: 6 / Com Tip: Take pictures and make a few notes about what you liked! This is great info to share with your space designer User Testing Avg: You: 12 / Company: 15 / Client: 10 Food & Amenities Avg: You: 14 / Company: 13 / Client: 13 Pho Avg You: 15 / Com studio card sorting

5 Phase Five: Bring in the experts Armed with your stakeholder research, start engaging with an architect or your general contractor to create a floor plan. Talk them through your research findings and what elements are important in your new office layout. Typically, the architect will work with you to create an ideal a floor plan for your needs. Phase Six: Communicate, Communicate, and Get out! Once you have the floorplan in your hands, it s time to communicate. Communicate with your team:! Share the floorplan. Now is the time to make sure needs are being met.! Share the construction timeline and where to work during build out. Communicate with your clients:! Share your expansion plans! Hey, it s exciting that you re growing.! Let them know where you ll be during the construction. Now you re ready to move out! If your construction timeline is long, consider updating your stakeholders along the way. Tip: On move out day, set up a time lapse camera to capture the action! Afterwords, you ll be impressed at all the teamwork it took to get your space ready for what s next.

6 Phase Seven: Move in & adjust Change is hard. If you re anything like our team, moving back into an unfamiliar space took some getting used to! While the space was much bigger, something still wasn t quite right. After about a week of sliding desks, bookshelves and rugs, we headed into our big conference room and handed everyone a blank piece of paper with the instructions to draw their own layout. What resulted was conversation and problem solving that made the office flow much better We were reminded during this process that every design project needs a little finesse once it encounters reality. Phase Eight: Observe Fortunately and unfortunately, office renovations are never done. In fact, all design projects are subject to evolving needs and will change over time. Think of your time in your new office like a research project, watching how people use the space and what adjustments you might need to make next time or in the interim. Visualhero is a design studio that works on everything from startup strategy and strategic facilitation to branding and user experience design. We approached our office redesign just as we d approach a project: with curiosity, passion and a commitment to doing what s best for the user. If you have any questions about our methodology, our renovation experience or how to plan for a redesign of your own, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].