The IIDA team at work at HQ in Chicago – Photo by Eric Laignel
Industry observers see more activity around where data meets design. How these two disparate disciplines can intersect and interact provides a broader understanding of the profession, and to offer these insights, the team at IIDA got creative. With the goal of providing research and resources that would best serve the membership – the IIDA Index Report was developed as an interactive tool the Association’s member firms could subscribe to get a better insight into many aspects of current industry trends. The IIDA Index, developed in collaboration with Designer Pages, was designed to enable commercial design and architecture firms to assess competitive positions, identify market trends, and analyze new business opportunities based on project scale, geography, and market sector. Statistics were pulled from 2016/2017 data, and the full dataset includes information on 11,000 projects from 74 firms throughout the U.S.
“As an analytics business in the commercial interior design industry, I was very excited by the concept and recognized the value for the industry, specifically, transparency into industry contraction/expansion by segment, region and other variables. Further, I recognized that an effort like this should belong to the industry, not a for-profit entity, and there is undoubtedly no better ambassador for the industry than IIDA.” – Jacob L. Slevin, CEO, and co-founder of Designer Pages
As commercial design becomes incredibly complex, with many more stakeholders involved than one might expect, the Index offers participating firms an in-depth base of information that they can reference when making decisions about where new business opportunities may align with how they want to plan their work or approach specific projects.