A Call for Empathy in Workplace Design
Two design strategists in Gensler’s Dallas office ask questions that challenge tradition and find answers suggesting a new method of beginning projects to assure that the clients’ workers are enabled to do their best work when the project is finished. Their questions? Can data, hard numbers and c-suite input provide everything needed for a people-oriented workplace design? Should projects be started with the mindset of a novice, leaving out the biases and assumptions that come from experience? Answers to those and other questions inform the work of Christina Donaldson, Design Strategist, and Mike McKeown, Strategy Director, who are promulgating a new best practice. Their method engages service design with a healthy dose of empathy as a means of revealing micro-relevancies that, in single strands or interwoven systems, can individualize workplace designs. Who holds such information and how is it obtained? What processes change? How does a designer identify the needed …
Log in to Continue Reading
