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With so many modes of communication is a dedicated space for collaboration necessary?
Design Thinking. This human-centric approach to problem solving is often considered a team sport – and rightly so. Whether it is education, banking, healthcare, transportation, hospitality, food and beverages or administration – every aspect of human activity involves many stakeholders across multiple domains. Take for example, a patient’s experience in a hospital. It is nigh impossible for the hospital management alone to improve patients’ overall experience. While the medical staff may look into the diagnosis and cure, what about the patient’s stay, food, security, and maybe even entertainment? Thus the overall outcome falls under the joint gambit of multiple departments. While it may be easy to work on solving a local problem by all stakeholders locally available, how do they convene and work from across geographies? Either way, collaborative teamwork is essential in Design Thinking and this means there needs to be a space for the stakeholder team to get together and collaborate.
Virtual Collaboration
The COVID pandemic forced the world into isolation and in the process, taught humans how to work in silos. Tele conferences became the standard way to communicate and tech giants such as Google and Microsoft feverishly worked on improving communication applications such as Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, Blue Jeans, Zoom and so on, and these became a person’s work life staple. While they did bring teams from across the world together, was it impactful enough to be the way forward even after the pandemic died down? If yes, why have schools and colleges reopened? Why are organizations calling their workforce back to office?
One school of thought, which is widely accepted across industries, is that too much remote work creates its own set of problems, such as diminished knowledge transfer, decreased engagement, cultural disconnect, and a slew of new distractions. Humans, at the end of the day, are social animals. While technologies such as the ones mentioned above can help connecting people across distances, can it foster collaboration?
The Collaborative Space: Fulfilling the Need to Connect
That takes us back to the opening lines of this blog post – the need to socially connect for better collaboration. Effective collaboration needs alignment, a shared purpose and of course, a space to help teams to work together. Added to this, is the fact that every human being is unique and, hence, tends to perform best when placed in an optimal space. For example, do all the members of an R&D team work and communicate the same? Do they adhere to the same style during ideation? Do they think and operate the same? While some are great visual communicators, others may be better in verbal communication. Some love to display ideas through low-fidelity prototypes while others may prefer an audio-visual route. Whatever may be the approach, the underlying need is to be able to connect with one another, communicate seamlessly and collaborate effortlessly.
A Space for Effective Outcomes
Being cognizant and accepting such unique requirements of every stakeholder, it is necessary to ensure that facilities are in place to not only support but to also empower every participant in their initiative as per their strengths. But this is only one aspect.
As Design Thinking is a team sport, it is essential that all stakeholders along with their unique skills are accommodated for holistic collaboration. That is the primary focus of such a center. How can different designers sit together in the most optimum way and perform as a team? When considering teams, how much qualifies as too much? How should the design center be designed? How should the seating be? Does seating actually have an impact on how people work?
Today, building designers agree that space does matter to how teams function. Space has a great impact on the human mind. We need to leverage spatial elements that help cross-collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas among participants. Providing the right space, appropriate creature comfort for teams, tools and everything in between goes a long way in getting superlative results.
Advantages of a Collaborative Space
Collaborative effort definitely has proven advantages. Mother Teresa is known to have stated, “None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” This is absolutely true in any human endeavour. When the vision is one, the collective outcome is superlative in impact. When this unison is also brought about in a physical space (collaborative space), synergies are created and the outcome becomes exponential.
It is important to foster a sense of ‘we’ before ‘I’. Great ideas are formed when working as a team. However, attachment to one’s idea is a difficult notion to relinquish. When working on a problem with the team, this could become a hindrance. When seated together and when working in common spaces conducive to better communication, a common sense of ownership can be brought about – and a common higher purpose is experienced. Imagine a small project team of 6-7 members, much like the US Navy SEAL team. Each member is perfectly attuned to the larger cause and shares a common vision. Similarly, a small project team seated together will have the best opportunity to be perfectly aligned. Any chance of an unconscious silo can be broken promoting greater cohesion.
But, the catch here isn’t just about the seating – it is about effective communication. A space designed to enhance collaboration should encourage tools and platforms for breaking silos and improving communication.
Now, have you seen such a place?
The Design Center
This is where a design center such as the 8012 FinTech Design Center comes into the forefront. A truly unique space, this center is equipped with design rooms and spaces to enable high performance of design teams, to translate ideas into to operational outcomes. The design center supports ideation and co-creation of products specific to customers’ unique needs. This is enabled through interactive and collaborative workshops, in informal environments using numerous design tools.
All design rooms have large, white writable walls that act as a powerful medium to encourage our designers, customers and other stakeholders to express views and to connect the dots. Writing to express thoughts is leveraged in a whole new way.
The center enables the stakeholders to discover opportunities – desirability of the solution, its feasibility and viability through hands-on sessions anchored in spaces exclusively designed for the purpose. We conduct guided high performance workouts for cross-functional business unit teams to challenge limiting beliefs, address constraints and architect best-in-class products.
Would you like to visit the 8012 FinTech Design Center? You may fill this brief form and we’ll get back to you. Alternatively, you may write to us at info@d-thinking.com or call us at +91.98401.99299.
