Issuu

Magazine

Fall 2020 Issue 016 US $20

04521 51194

Career Interrupted?

Saying Bye to Brick & Mortar

Race Equity at Work

Angela Yeh and Thriving by Design

Paloma Medina's Store Transforms

Tools for Organizational Culture

Page 22

Page 44

Page 64

Contents. DEPARTMENTS 6

Contributors

14 Q&A

From the Editor

16 Welcome to the Workplace Innovation Issue

News

Recommendations

18 Design Activity

FEATURES 22

BUSINESS

Career Interrupted Design a Thriving Career in an Uncertain World By Angela Yeh, Founder & Chief Talent Strategist, Thrive by Design & Yeh IDeology

PROFILE • SOCIAL IMPACT

Igniting Social Change Through a Screen By Kolton Harris, Vice President of the Board, Writer’s Block InK

WORKPLACE INNOVATION

The Rise of the Remote Meeting How to More Than Survive in a Virtual Work World By Ryann Hoffman, Founder and Principal, Staircase Strategy

FRONT COVER DESIGNED BY RACHEL WUI

Fall 2020 â€¢ Issue 016

The Workplace Innovation Issue

WE DESIGN INTERVIEW

Paths Diverge An Interview with Paloma Medina Interviewed By Sara Magalio

WORKPLACE INNOVATION

The Evolving Workplace People Will Drive the Future By Michael Tingley, FAIA, Bora Architecture & Interiors

DIVERSITY

Race Equity at Work Excerpted from Awake to Woke to Work: Building a Race Equity Culture (Equity in the Center, 2018) By Kerrien Suarez, Executive Director and Ericka Hines, Managing Director & Lead Researcher

BUSINESS

Designing for Designers A Website Redesign for a Global Design Firm By Joanna Chow, Senior Associate & Director of Communications, Sasaki, and Scott Dasse, Principal, Upstatement

Have a great design impact story? editor@designmuseumfoundation.org

Interested in advertising opportunities? advertise@designmuseumfoundation.org

DESIGN MUSEUM MAGAZINE ISSUE 016 FALL 2020 (ISSN 2573-9204) IS PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY DESIGN MUSEUM FOUNDATION. 100 SUMMER STREET, SUITE 1925, BOSTON, MA 02110. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO DESIGN MUSEUM FOUNDATION, 100 SUMMER STREET, SUITE 1925, BOSTON, MA 02110.

Design Activity. Redesign your workspace using a homemade floor plan! In this activity, use your design skills to take control of your space to improve your work environment, whether you’re a student doing homework, using Zoom like a boss from the bathroom of your apartment, reimagining your open plan work environment, or in non-office industries like food service, hospitality, or education! Reconfiguring and mapping out the floor plan will make you the designer of your domain, no matter how big or small.

Before starting, gather some materials. You will need paper (graph paper, if you have any), pencil, ruler or hard edge (optional), and a tape measure (optional). Visit designmuseumfoundation.org/home-floor-plan for printable resources and general information on floor plans.

Choose the room that is or will be your workspace. Walk around and observe the room, making note of where walls, windows, and doors are placed, as well as their sizes—are there certain walls or windows that are longer than others? Where are they? Take notes and make sketches to help remember the details.

After you have finished observing, draw a free-hand sketch of the floor plan of the room you just observed. Observe the room again and make sure you aren’t missing anything.

After the initial sketch, use the tape measure to measure the dimensions of the room and locations of doors and windows. Write the measurements down on the sketch. Then convert the measurements to a smaller scale.

Once everything has been converted, draw the new scaled sketch using a ruler.

Now you can start the process of rearranging your workspace by adding your furniture or other room elements to the floor plan. Draw your room elements to scale on a separate piece of paper, cut them out, and arrange however you’d like on top of your floorplan. Note: There are examples of furniture symbols online, or you can make up your own. The only rule is that they should be to scale, otherwise your plan may not fit in the space!

Try moving the room elements around on top of your floor plan. Once you’ve placed everything in its new location, take a look at the space. Is there anything that you want to change again? Lay out the new changes in the floor plan to make sure they’ll fit, and then move the furniture and other room elements to match the plan. Keep iterating your design until you’re happy with your new workspace!

Share your floorplans with us using #designtogether and tag us! @designmuseumeverywhere

@design_museum 21

WORKPLACE INNOVATION

The Rise of the Remote Meeting. How to More Than Survive in a Virtual Work World By Ryann Hoffman, Founding Partner & Principal, Staircase Strategy Those of us who chose to work remotely before 2020, at a time when we could move freely between our home offices and our communities, did so with immense privilege. I am one of these people. This past spring, a new work-from-home population erupted in the abrupt switch to virtual jobs and at-home families. Many newly remote cultures are a reactive attempt to slow the chaos and hurt of a pandemic for our most vulnerable, while the pain of chronic racial injustice flares. Prior to 2020, 1 in 50 Americans worked from home. The Economist reports that number is now 1 in 3. Our 2020 collective shift to working from home is not a straightforward experience of remote work. Through exploring virtual communication to enhance workplace collaboration when it was an exciting choice, I learned there are well-founded cases to be made for in-person work between human beings. Touch, like a handshake, triggers endorphins. These endorphins make us feel connected to those we touch. Being physically near a person matches our heart rate to theirs and causes us to mirror their movement. These are two critical steps in achieving empathy. When we feel empathy for one another, we are more vulnerable. As vulnerability researcher Brené Brown has taught us, we then become more creative. If

we trust and feel connected, we are able to incorporate new perspectives, and we can have constructive conflict. These are both necessary ingredients for solving complex problems with complex solutions. In short, successful in-person interactions fast-track the conditions for effective teamwork in a complicated world. There are unique aspects of digital workspaces that can foster feelings of trust and connection remotely, but it’s harder than in-person. In an article in the June 2020 issue of Psychology Today, Sara Eckel overviews what can be lost in the digisphere to dehumanizing effect. “In our digital lives, it’s easier to turn away,” Eckel writes. “But each time we do, we lose our capacity for empathy.” It takes tips and tricks to game technology into working for and not against our collaborative natures. There are even aspects of remote environments that outperform in-person sessions, like ease of documentation. But it takes thoughtful design to create meaningful digital experiences. One of my underlying goals in writing about remote work in this moment is to leverage my years of experience to benefit those facing the myriad of traumas of being alive at this time, those attempting to fundamentally change the way they work. My approach is to be a resource for people at a moment in time when the need is high while experience is low and to build on the body of documentation, frameworks, and ILLUSTRATIONS BY RACHEL WUI

WE DESIGN INTERVIEW • ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Paths Diverge. An Interview with Paloma Medina Interviewed By Sara Magalio Paloma Medina is the founder and owner of 11:11 Supply, a company that incorporates the psychology and science of life and work improvement into the curation of office supplies and organizational tools. 11:11 Supply also offers workshops in which attendees learn everyday tips on how to enhance their work and personal life. Paloma is a performance coach and trainer that specializes in brainfriendly methods to enhance clients’ work and life outlooks and practices. She has worked with tech companies such as Etsy, nonprofit organizations in healthcare, as well as individual leaders and CEOs. She was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, but has lived on the west coast of the U.S. since she was eight years old. While Paloma’s Portland-based store has had to close temporarily due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, she is working to bring the store to a new and improved online platform, and she has also pivoted the main focus of her work from the psychology of office supplies to another passion of hers—workplace equity and inclusion training. I spoke with Paloma to learn more about this new direction her work has taken, and how she envisions 11:11 Supply evolving in the future.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CREATIVE MORNINGS PDX