Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Purposeful design builds on this quote by creating a novel problem-solving approach that inspires people, enhances experiences, and drives strategic results. This new design approach leverages the strengths and key ideas of design thinking as well as experiential and emotional design to positively impact the environments and behaviors within a space. The three key principles of purposeful design are centered on intent, people, and emotion—all of which deliver a more informed, empathetic, and exciting design solution. Armed with a deeper understanding of people, their behaviors, and feelings, designers can generate positive improvements on the effectiveness of work environments, while helping to enhance business results for their clients.
Understanding Purposeful Design
Purposeful design takes a holistic look at all aspects of design including the people, the organization, and other key influences through a collaborative exchange of information. This process occurs prior to putting pen to paper. Designers’ personal assumptions and perceptions for the final solutions are tempered by including valuable insights comprised of the users’ needs, aspirations, and journeys within the design. This method ensures that the final design of the space feels as though it was created expressly for the people interacting within the environment. To better illustrate this principle, picture a tripod. Each of the three purposeful design components function like the legs of a tripod to provide balance and a solid foundation for impactful design. These three principles may shift and adjust to accommodate different situations and conditions. However, if one is eliminated, the final design may not achieve its full potential. When all three principles are incorporated, they produce a more successful and powerful solution that inspires the users of the space, meets their needs, and aligns with the organization’s goals. This approach has unique implications for the future of workplace design.
The First Principle: Informed
Informed design is intentional, focused, and driven by awareness, information, and data. It refers to the iterative practice of extracting, distilling, and leveraging ideas, research, and information to help formulate design solutions. Analyzed data can help expose problems, provide more information about those problems, and evaluate the effectiveness of solutions. According to Design Blog Editor Cameron Chapman, “Collecting and analyzing data is key to creating better designs and user experiences.” Through the process of gathering and analyzing, designers should incorporate a full range of both qualitative and quantitative data types early and throughout the process. Strategic data incorporates softer data, including the vision, leadership’s goals, and success criteria of the project and organization. Spatial data includes not only “hard” data, which is the quantitative information on where, when, and how people spend their time, but also “soft” data which is the qualitative or more subjective perceptions of how people’s time was spent in specific spaces. Data focusing on the building’s performance and human comforts such as temperature, humidity, and light, is considered environmental data, while business data assist designers in understanding their clients’ work processes and workflow.