Engaging staff to develop a flexible workspace
Manufacturing & Technologies
Services
Prototyping & Testing
Applied Methods

→ Expert interviews
→ Creative brainstorming
→ Rapid prototyping
→ Co-creation workshop

Digital tools
Duration

1 day

client
challenge
Neoperl wanted to find out how it could include employees’ feedback and insights to design a
purposeful new building. The organisation wanted the new space to include not only an on-site cafeteria but to incorporate different space requirements that could fluidly adapt to the diverse needs of their employees.
Process
Ideation
Prototyping

Ideation

Four cross-functional teams, made up of employees, interior designers and external architects, were presented with four pre-determined use cases. The participants started by conducting interviews within the group to generate more insights on the use cases. Afterwards, they adopted various brainstorming techniques and explored different ways to re-design the space and increase the quality and frequency of social interactions between the employees. The most promising ideas were then selected by the teams.

Prototyping

During this step, the teams were re-shuffled to have one expert for every scenario in each of the teams. This way, the ideas could be combined in holistic space concepts that would fulfil the users’ needs and space requirements. From here, the concepts were then prototyped in small-scale physical models and feedback on them was then gathered within the bigger group.

“It was great to have a mix of both experts and employees. The communication among participants was as well very inspiring!”

– Workshop participant

outcome

The four cross functional teams worked in parallel to conceptualise and ultimately prototype 3D space models which would serve as inspiration and blueprint for the final space design of the architect in charge. Incorporating these models in to the co-creation process ensured the considerations of all stakeholders’ needs and total adoption of the final concept by the employees.

Project Lead
Linda Armbruster
Director Collaborative Innovation
Linda holds an M.A. in Strategic Design from the design akademie berlin. As a trained Design Thinker from the Potsdam and Stanford d.school, co-founder of Spark Works and lecturer at the ETHZ, she builds and leads research and training programs in the private and public sector, blending methods grounded in Human-Centred Design to inform and inspire insight-driven innovation.
Partners
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