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Designing Inspiring Collaborative Spaces

Good design is impressive if all it takes is one look to realize its purpose or message. This isn’t just true for branding or web design but for office interior design as well. In fact, modern office design is easily distinguishable from that of the more traditional approach. For instance, today, if you look at the room of a company’s creative team, you’ll instantly see how it differs from that of the technical team.
In this article, we are going to talk about designing the office for a specific purpose- collaboration.
Meeting and conference rooms may not be as used as the production rooms of the office but it’s just as important. Here is where ideas get transformed into reality so you have to make sure that your people have what they need to fully harness their creative potential. To help you out, here are a few things you should consider to design an effective and inspiring collaborative space in the office:

1. Choose the right color.

We’ve discussed in some previous posts how color affects the moods of your employee; this also applies when you design the conference or meeting room. Opt for earthy, relaxing wall colors like blue or green are a great choice because your team needs to feel stress free before they can really tap into the right hemisphere of their brains. This is exactly why cafes and coffee shops (which are more often than not painted in earthy tones) continue to be a creative’s preferred spot if they need to unwind and find inspiration.

2. Keep it well-stocked.

Collaborative rooms should be well-stocked with office supplies every team in the company would potentially need in times of brainstorming. From white or glass boards, dry erase markers, pens and papers, to projectors and other audio-visual presentation equipment, keeping the conference room well-stocked enables them to write down or talk about the idea the very moment it presents itself.

3. Steer away from stiff furniture.

Creativity is born out of a relaxed environment that enables people to come out of their shell and be themselves. This is the reason you should decorate internal collaborative spaces with quirky, fun office furniture like bean bag chairs, low coffee tables, with provisions for simple games such as foosball and darts because sometimes, giving your team a few minutes of microbreak allows them to feel more in tuned with their creative side

4. Offer free refreshments.

Writers, designers, and other creatives are often fueled by a particular drink, which more often than not, come in the form of coffee. So if possible, include free coffee and water in your company budget so your team has their liquid luck whenever there’s a need to jumpstart their imagination.

5. Design with flexibility in mind.

The creative process can come in different forms- one day, your writers are discussing on the table, the next day your designers are laying out mockups and layouts on the floor, right after that both teams will be in a huddle trying to stitch both words and graphics together. The right way to adapt to these requirements is designing the collaborative space with flexibility in mind. Use modular office furniture so whoever uses the room has the liberty to rearrange it easily without breaking a sweat.
There are many ways to which you can go about designing the office to encourage effective communication, collaboration, and teamwork so if you need help, give our effective office space planning and interior designing a call and we’d be glad to help you. We also offer quirky and modular office furniture if you’re looking for some!