REFLECTION – VISUALIZATION TOOL

1. Challenge:

As a Design Architect working for an Interior Design and Construction firm, I haved faced  diferent types of clients along the way. Most of the times, the client will give us some  minimal insight on what they want and expect of the project, and they blindly trust us to  come with innovative ideas for their proposal.  Other times, we face the wannabe designer client. And by that I don´t mean it in a bad way.  This just means that the client wants to be involved in the whole process and wants to be  informed and consulted of all of our choices.  This usually tends to make the process harder, because of the many changes and the large  amount of options and choices that we can give, and that they need to decide on.   In addition, this special client was not only 1 person, it was a group of 5 very important  people in a large international company that were expecting the best, -in their personal  interest- but also in general for their new offices.   To get everyone involved in the project to agree on the design was a hard task to achieve,  since all of the stakeholders have different input on it and belong to different areas on their  company.

2. Selection:

Our design team wanted to try something new with this client. We knew this client wanted  to be as involved as possible, but they were also NOT designers, so they needed some  guidance to help them achieve what they all have in mind.   We decided that the best way to allign all the information this 5 people have in mind, was to  perform a series of Workshops, to really listen to what they have to say, but also let them  play with the design options we have in order to get a consensus. It was very important that  they all agree -visually- to a series of images that best describe the dream office they all  have in mind and that works best for the company.

3. Application:

The workshops were developed in three phases: listen, re-arrange and rule-out. developed  Through all the phases, they were given a large amount of reference images that the  design team pre-selected based on the first conversations we had. Some of them were  what we expected them to like, and some others, were the ones that we were sure they will  remove.   To our surprise, this assumptions were not always right. Through their eyes we could  understand what they liked on each image, and why they liked it and why it was important  to have that in the project, even if it was a bright color, a special finish, a collaborative  space that they desired to have. They arrange and re-arrange all the images they like, and  add some important notes and highlights of what they all in agreement expected of the  project, even some things that at the beginning they won´t even consider were included,  because the intention of our workshop was to let them dream big but also be realistic of  what could happen in their new space, giving us also the chance to be closer to their needs  and desires.

4. Insight:

Getting everyone involved helped us solidified the idea that this project was a team work.  As designers, we needed to correctly portray all the information they already have in mind,  but it was also their responsability to share it with us in a right way, so we could translate  that to a design plan that they could understand and easily relate to all the previous images  they have seen during the workshops performed. This helped us be more certain with our  design, since we were sure that the scope of the project was understood and the design

concept was aligned with our client requirements and with our design ideas. Surprisingly,  the design team was happy with the result and client was more than satisfied with the  proposal. The feedback we recieved from them was all very complementary to our ideas,  and the project moved on smoothly with minimal changes. The client was glad to be  involved and to feel part of the team, and the designers felt more at ease that they didn´t  have to guess to know exactly what the client wanted and needed.

5. Approach:

Performing a design workshops with non-designers was easier than we tought so, thanks  to all the imagery and discussion it can happen around a single idea, and a lot of different  backgrounds and personalities involved. Issues that were not even consider at the  beginning gain more importance during this process, helping us understand more broadly  the company manners and the individual desires of the stakeholders.   We were surprised that adding this extra step on our design process will help us get a  more solidified proposal that was spot-on for our client, and that it was also fun to the  client to be involved and understand the design process.   Its possible that we keep performing this workshops with our future clients, since this gave  us more certainty about every decision we make, and helped us get to know the client   better, earning valuable insight that would make the whole process better for everyone  involved, from the design team to the end customer or client.

