At VersionOne, we just got the opportunity to move to a new team room. It's far superior in terms of size, noise level, and natural light. It's a very cool, very lofty kind of space. To get things started, we applied the "design storm" exercise which is a form of concurrent set-based design, an evolution of the old school architectural charette. Special thanks to @uxdesignermike who turned us on to this tool at KaizenConf. Mike, for the unaware, is awesome.
You'll find the opening I used to kick the session off below. I'll be sure to post a few follow up shots as we get our space together in the coming days.
#
In moving to a new, more-ideal space we have an unusual opportunity to optimize for collaboration, productivity, and fun. To get this process and involve the numerous smart and opinionated members of the V1 development team, we’d like to engage in a process called “the design storm.”
We have a few goals and constraints going into this:
- We want to keep noise at an acceptable level.
- We want an intensely collaborative environment.
- We want the space to be flexible and permit promiscuous pairing.
- We need spaces for breakouts and loud meetings.
- We want stand-ups to remain unbroken (no walkthroughs).
- We want to pay attention to traffic patterns.
- We want to change it up every so often. Take that how you will.
- We want our continuous improvement efforts to be highly visible and easily accessible.
- We want the team to sit in the same area together (i.e. no cave dwellers).
- We want to leverage natural light the best we can.
I’ve hinted at this, but our main motivations are:
- Collaboration – proximity promotes knowledge sharing.
- Creativity – ours is a creative job. it should be easy to start designing stuff.
- Productivity – it’s easy to focus and get stuff done.
- Awareness – looking at the walls yields information.
- A pleasant working space is, well, pleasant.
Now, without pre-designing the space, does anyone have anything else?
Posted
Wed, Nov 5 2008 1:53 PM
by
Dave Laribee