Scope:
Design work spaces for collaboration and trust
Challenge and goal:
The Energetics Technology Center (ETC) was opening up a new business incubator to help startup companies accelerate and meet their needs during the initial phases of growth. The goal was to design collaborative spaces for the incubator so that Army Research Lab scientists, engineers, and technical researchers could successfully collaborate on their intellectual property with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and university professors to launch startups.
Approach:
We interviewed ARL researchers, scientists. We also interviewed Logan Powell, the Open-IDEO Meetup coordinator, who runs Hack-a-thons from collaborative spaces and who also designs similar collaborative spaces. Based on our user research we crafted personas of potential users who would be using the space: Entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, and researchers.
We did a series of Fly-on-the-wall observations by visiting several incubators including Emerging Technology Center, The Ground Floor, Fast Forward (JHU Technical Ventures), BetaMore, 1776, and the MedTech Cluster. There, we evaluated how the spaces were used, the ratio of private and collaborative spaces, and balance between productive and playful spaces. We took note of what areas received the most usage and which parts the least.
Our team also visited analogous spaces other than incubators, such as a Baltimore public school pre-school, and the MICA Social Design spaces. We were curious to see how small children and graduate students used their spaces to collaborate and play.
The most important part of our research was synthesizing the initial findings and research insights. We captured our findings in sticky notes format and then categorized them into groups. Leveraging this design thinking exercise, we pinpointed the main patterns that we discovered; privacy, trust, and outlets- which informed our solution.
Solution:
The first element of our design is the trust which is nothing beyond creating an atmosphere that collaborators in the space could leverage to build trust quickly and establish a rapport. This design element manifests itself in furniture selection, layout, and budgeting for adequate workshopping space, group work, etc.
Another important factor was privacy. Given the early startups, our very protective of their IP and they tend to be suspicious of other teams. We focused on creating spaces that creates a sense of privacy by engineering soundproof barriers and elements. Besides material and physical space, we used aesthetics and layout design to convey the message of privacy to the user. We also used modular walls and structures that give the user the flexibility to quickly change the layout from private to group area.
Last but not least was designing for outlets for the frustrating highs and lows of an average workday. Given that entrepreneurs face lots of obstacles especially during the first few months of formation of their company, we intended to design for fun and joyful elements that provide an opportunity for the users to take the break and take their mind off of their work. These outlets can be mini gyms, ping pong tables, punching bags, etc.
Collaborators: Keith Gordon, Meredith Shelby, Katie Rose