How can the center support its users to spur collaboration and innovation?

My role

I worked as a strategic and user experience designer. The team was made of two designers - including me, two subject matter experts in lab design, and a project manager.

I executed a user research plan, conducted stakeholder interviews, engaged subject matter experts, and gathered benchmarks of precedent innovation centers. I designed stakeholder workshops to identify the center’s goals, activities, and desired user experience. Illustrated the space concepts and worked closely with another designer to develop the design of the final report.

Vision and Strategy

The final deliverable of this work was a document that articulates the desired outcomes and attributes for a new Innovation center to guide the design and decision-making process of the architecture and space. The research included contextual project information, a set of overarching goals for the center, identification of primary user groups and their intended activities, and an initial description of the desired space types. Read together, this document outlines the high-level functionality of the center and the spatial conditions required to support collaboration and future innovation.

We started our work with one-on-one interviews with representatives of different teams who provided an overview of their team, their current needs, challenges, and a summary of their collaboration with other teams. In parallel, we conducted benchmarking research around other innovation centers around the world that could inform best practices in innovation.

Then, we conducted two workshops. The first one was an explorative workshop where we presented benchmarks that can inspire a generative discussion around the goals for the center. We also had a dive into developing user profiles.

The second workshop was focused on a deeper understanding of the workflows and team collaboration and defining how spaces could support those flows. This exercise helped us understand the cross-team workflow from beginning to end, and imagine how their new space and architecture could enhance their work and collaboration.

Details of the work

Design principles

After identifying the goals for the center, we translated them into design principles that served as guidelines for architectural design. All the principles outlined responded to specific conditions including location, current challenges, and team dynamics and dependencies.

user profiles

We created personas to define the main types of users and the activities they will carry on at the innovation center. They helped us define different needs, pain points, and desires of each user group, and understand where there were overlapping and distinct needs.

TEAM ADJACENCIES

A team adjacencies diagram was created to understand how different teams collaborate and provide a blueprint of how the spaces might be organized based on collaboration and the need for access to specific types of spaces such as labs.

Relationship Maps

One of the key aspects of the research was to understand how different teams work together and the type of exchange they have. This mapping was the foundation for how we could understand the needs and interdependencies of each team.

Benchmarks

We conducted benchmarking research on innovation spaces and labs to inspire stakeholders to think about the possibilities of their new innovation center. These benchmarks were organized around productive tensions that emerged in our early interview process. The tensions included planned vs. open-ended, automated large scale vs. manual small-scale, among others.

Space Types

The space types derived from a collaborative exploration of key workflows for research, development, and operational teams.