A little over a year ago, our office lease was nearing its end and we were faced with a decision—do we extend our lease and stay in our current space or do we relocate? At face value, this seems like a simple question to answer. However, we quickly learned that answering this question is neither simple nor easy. As we embarked on the journey to answer this one question, we learned a lot about ourselves and the power of design in the workplace.
Initially, there were spreadsheets to track revenue, projected growth, and expenses to better understand the financial aspect of the decision to move or stay. Data integrity was key as the findings would inform and support our decision. I now know that while tedious, this was the easy part.
Based on the data, the decision was made to relocate. We enlisted the help of our Gensler Chicago design team with one request: treat us like a client. We wanted the full experience—workshops, interviews, activity and utilization studies, Workplace Performance studies—we wanted it all, and our journey began!
We were an open book for the design team to discover what made us a fun, unique group of software developers, technicians and client service representatives. During the visioning portion of the project, we went through a series of interviews, surveys and studies to discover our personality. The design team discovered that we love the outdoors—regardless of the weather or time of year. We’re a social group that also needs the balance of quiet focus time, and we’re technical and strategic thinkers. We like warm colors with black or gray being the favorite color for the majority of us. Finally, we found that, almost equally, we like metal, stone and wood finishes.
Through this process we analyzed ourselves and our workplace, and I learned so much about our team. I couldn’t help but wonder… how would this all play out? In his blog, “Discovering the Power of Words,” Christopher Crawford shares the power of words and how materials and finishes stem from the story of the space and understanding what makes the organization tick. Would the designers implement everything they learned about us, or base their design on only a portion of the information? I had no idea, but I knew I needed to trust them and embrace the process.
I’ll never forget the excitement and energy I felt when we unveiled the initial design concept to our staff. We asked our design team to share the story behind the design as opposed to simply showing renderings. I’m so glad we did that. It showed that not only was the concept something we absolutely loved, but the staff saw firsthand how their likes and needs of specific types of spaces were integrated into a very thoughtful, yet efficient design.