Yesterday, after watching another fantastic LX Signature: The Future of Corporate Academies with Jeanne Meister, brings forward another opportunity to share this link on creating digital spaces for employees and teams to connect around wellness and learning etc.
" If a company can create digital spaces for their employees and teams to connect around wellness, learning, and physical activity, they will successfully capture their employees’ attention and maintain their cultural offering within their own brand ecosystem."
United Therapeutics built the world’s largest, most intelligent commercial sustainable building and coined it the Unisphere, a feat of design and engineering. Our goal was to showcase the complex net-zero ecosystem at play with the building while reminding employees and visitors of their place within this unique system. We created a digital, artistic and informational experience design system that inspires the building’s inhabitants and makes them an integral part of their own environment. In the main lobby, we created a more than 40-foot-tall Energy Dial that showcases the current state of the building’s energy. The dial’s different lighting features show when the building is in ‘energy surplus,’ ‘energy deficit’ and ‘solar noon.’
I am fascinated by the possibilities space redesign may bring us. Early in my career I designed and built studios, training and meeting spaces and the focus was around how many could we pack in rather than the ability to interact, connect, and begin developing collaboration. As I walked downtown where I live and see how many buildings are quiet, I think the value proposition has changed around what makes a company an employer of choice. The benefits offered 3 years ago might not carry the same allure they once did.
The parts we’ve rediscovered, "community, culture, inspiration, collaboration, teamwork, impromptu conversation, and leadership vision " are where space to connect with intention lies. Don’t force people to return to the office, provide a reason to be together, it isn’t the space, it is the people, the connections, the work that has meaning that will bring people in, then make the space supportive of those groups of people, not cubicles but community spaces.
I wonder if some companies might look to their spaces as open to the community, being hosts of innovation and supporting the local efforts to build economy, diversity, and neighborhood forums beginning with groups coming together. Interesting times and creative opportunities await those organizations willing to act with purpose and intention.
What happens when we take the word ‘learning’ out of LXD, it becomes experience design? Is it not implied that learning is the actual intention? The human experience is what we need, what Bill describes as, " the community, the culture, inspiration, collaboration, teamwork, conversation and leadership vision!"
Thanks Bill- this is inspirational! @WJRyan "The parts we’ve rediscovered, “community, culture, inspiration, collaboration, teamwork, impromptu conversation, and leadership vision " are where space to connect with intention lies.”
From the linked article:
“As experience designers, we constantly think about the physical-digital intersection – a lessening divide as human behavior melds with new types of technology in and out of the workplace.”
