Developing people-centric buildings and spaces
Understanding how a building is going to work
I’ve been helping to design buildings for over 25 years. In this time I’ve frequently been blown away by how people can design such beautiful and graceful buildings and simultaneously frustrated with my own inability to be able to do the same. I can’t seem to think in aesthetic and multidimensional design terms. There are many organisations that know how to do this. However, the gap appears to be in understanding how the building is actually going to work. The more I’m drawn into building design I realise that so much more could be done.
Often, it seems, no one stops to think about how it will actually work: how a customer is going to use it, what efficiencies can be harnessed through a new design, and how the building can be fully inclusive and future proofed as operating models develop and change. A building that works for everyone. I’ve worked across almost all sectors and I’ve concluded that this opportunity is more or less universal.
A building that works for everyone
Why is this? It seems the primary reason is that the design team and the people who will use the building do not ‘connect’; the needs of one are not translated to the other. The ‘need’ is to bridge the gap between these two sets of people who often have very different attitudes and behaviours.
The design team, for example, tend to be visionary, are comfortable with ambiguity and can describe the aesthetic and visual appeal of the building. They love threading the design process to reach its artistic and cultural conclusion.
Operators, on the other hand, tend to be in the ‘here and now’ as they typically focus on day-to-day operations. They can also have a subconscious bias where it’s difficult for them to differentiate between their interests and those of the customer.
Then there’s what customers want.
This isn’t easy, for anyone. This takes time and effort. People are often blindsided by the Pinker Paradox; “once you know a subject fairly well, it is enormously difficult to put yourself in the position of someone who doesn’t know it”.
However, it seems to break down into three requirements.
The first step is often called the brilliant basics - what are the things you absolutely have to get right every time? This means things like clean toilets, not having to queue to get a drink at a café, and being able to park the car easily. Finding the front door.
Then there’s making it easy; easy to find your way around - ‘frictionless movement’ or being able to get in. Over the last 20 years I’ve been asking how often organisations get this part right. Only 20% is the typical answer. But what you’re really trying to do with the building is to get an emotional connection with people. This is what really matters; delivering an experience that fosters advocacy either through social media or people returning for more. Much of this comes from the aesthetic appeal of the building, but a lot of it comes from how the building works; how it reduces friction, improves the human experience and maximise the commercial benefits for all organisations using the building.
Many psychologists will tell you that it is the first and last elements of an experience that people remember and in turn drives emotional connection. Our experience is that this is true. It never ceases to amaze me how important this and how frequently it is missed.
So, what to do? The key to all of this is getting the design team to feel emotionally connected with customers and the operators who have to deliver the experience. To do this requires the usual things like desktops, case studies and being there, in the operation, watching. But, it also takes humility. What organisations want is innovation. Most customers aren’t interested in that - they just want it to work.