Design & Innovation

After visiting SAP and Neutron today, one interesting thing I noticed was the design of the workspace. In particular, I’d never seen cubicles that low before. After having read about, and discussed, the idea of low cubicles, it was refreshing to see it’s actually being used in the workspaces. It really creates a sense of openness, as well as a focus on communication and collaboration. I think you can even go further and relate this to the transparency within a company, and how information is shared and communicated. High cubicles really give employees the feeling of a closed and individual work environment, which is exactly what design thinking is trying to avoid. It seems to be such an easy concept to switch to, but at the same time I wonder how many companies really have the low cubicles that we saw today.

Having said that, however, SAP also had a very playful and decorated work environment. Employees were given the opportunity to design their workspaces however they wanted, which I believe gives them a sense of belonging and authority. It seems that the balance of the open workspace with the personal decorations is a simple but powerful tool companies can use to become more design oriented. I’m very curious what we’re going to see at IDEO tomorrow, because of what I’ve heard and read so far. 

Keeping with the theme I started of looking at design in Philadelphia, I thought I’d send along a blog that I’ve kept on my radar for quite some time. http://designphiladelphia.wordpress.com/. The blogger created the site to keep Philadelphians abreast of events or information regarding local design. If you have never heard about DesignPhiladelphia, it is a week long event that showcases design in many capacities through Philadelphia. It usually happens in the Spring, which is why I visited the site to see what happenings might be going on that I could share with the class. Unfortunately the event has been moved to October. Nevertheless, I really enjoy the photographs and keeping up the lastest events in Philadelphia. So when October comes along, anyone that wants to join me at Designphiladelphia rolls along, let me know.

I also wanted to celebrate a woman named Eileen Tognini who spent much of her working life at IBM. It really impresses me how she was able to transfer her learnings in corporate America into her ”Gallery in the Garden” here in Philadelphia. She operated from a similar school of collaboration (like Apple or Gehry that we spoke about in class last week) where she works with architects, landscaping professionals and designers using all their inputs to create the right aethstetis and functional elements. Visit her site at: http://eileentognini.com/.