Designing the Design Space

Designing the Design Space

Brad Griffith - September 13, 2016

How I Constructed My Space

I meet most often with individuals in my office during strategic planning sessions.  I wanted to arrange the space in a way that would allow for collaboration in multiple ways.

I'm fortunate enough to have a large dry erase board in my office that is centered on a wall that has no attached furniture.  I use this for brainstorming and collaboration with my coworkers, but it makes a very good analog canvas for LEM.  You'll notice that I've added an example agenda to the white board.  I think it's great to give people an early idea of how your meeting will go down so that they know what to expect.  I also have dry erase markers and LEM sticky notes available for analog modeling.

My desk has a rounded end where you can see that I have placed a total of three chairs.  I have chosen to put the chairs around the table so that my clients and I can have a shared space to look at any printouts or mark up documents.  All of the chairs in my office are on rollers and can easily be moved away if more space is needed or standing collaboration is warranted.

I think the minimal decorations I have on that wall are actually serving me well by not cluttering the ideation space.  I wonder if this has been an issue or even noticeable for other individuals' design spaces.

I plan on continuing to use this space to conduct strategic planning sessions for individual or small groups of faculty.  This space will not work for groups of more than three people if I had to guess due to the room's spatial limitations and the size of my whiteboard.