Is Your Conference Room Taken?
The objective was to aid employees in utilizing our conference rooms more effectively.
The problem came from having such a large number of conference rooms spread over a large campus. Many rooms were loosely dubbed by departments that no longer resided there. “Engineering North” was a difficult room to find considering it sat south of multiple conference rooms in the Accounting department. A few rooms were being overbooked while several rooms sat vacant and underutilized. Meanwhile, employees had trouble scheduling the right room and attendees had trouble finding their meetings. In short, total chaos.
13 Problems
1. Is your meeting room taken?
2. When does the meeting end? & who else has it scheduled today?
3. Wouldn't it be great to see the attendees without disturbing them?
3. Wouldn't it be great to see the attendees without disturbing them?
4. Wouldn't it be great to pop into an open conference room & schedule it on the fly?
5. No one can keep track of all the conference rooms (it's worse for new employees)
6. Directional names (south east, northwest, etc.) repeatedly failed & proved confusing
7. One Utah employee schedule a meeting in our London office by mistake (it happens)
8. We need to quickly find rooms, remember where they are, and schedule them correctly.
9. Awkward eye contact between those in meetings & those walking by?
10. Privacy without blocking out views and light is crucial to morale
11. It's helpful to look in on a meeting, in a non-distracting way and see who is in it.
12. We need to make the space our own & remind employees of our core values
13. We want to foster creativity & morale by providing useful and creative spaces.
13. We want to foster creativity & morale by providing useful and creative spaces.
SOLUTIONS & Opportunities
Problems 1-4
Touch screens, located outside each conference room allow users to quickly gather or input a variety of information at the moment they need it most. These designs match the themes and names.
Problems 5-7
We themed specific sections of the building & named their conference rooms accordingly. For example, if your next meeting room is named after a famous movie studio (Pixar, Disney, etc.), then at least you know what floor/section of the building to start in (near Marketing). If the room is named after a famous inventor/engineer, then head to the engineering department. These names help you immediately refine down your search from the whole building to a single section. In addition, you know its not in the UK as their meeting rooms are based off of famous British sites.
Problems 8-9
The room names are easily identifiable and memorable. If your first day includes a meeting in the Lucas Film room, the one with the storm trooper, then you will not soon forget where it is and what its name is while scheduling in outlook next week.
Problems 9-13
I designed vinyl privacy screens to adhere to the existing glass walls. These look like etched glass, but are more affordable. They preserve views and let light through while still affording privacy. They are designed at a specific height to only shield the eye-line of those sitting in meetings. Only the name of the conference room is higher than cubicle walls. This makes it clearly visible at some distance, but also preserves the window views. Aside from scheduling tablets and installing privacy screens, our IT department upgraded the tools inside the conference rooms. With these phases over, we are now looking into a variety of furniture, posters, and various materials to enhance the theme and aid productivity.
