Wellness in the workplace has had a buzz in the last few years, and is a strong focus for Gen Z. But what does wellness mean to you? We asked Stradistas this exact question a few months ago, and had a series of wonderful one on one conversations with a diverse group of participants. We were searching for the essence of what is important to us and finding alignment with Strada’s culture.
Charette
After the series of interviews, we followed up with a charette, where we explored the idea of creating an environment and experience supporting our wellness.
We looked for patterns and common goals, and translated the abstract concepts into physical simple vignettes using what we could find around our office.
Our findings were grouped in few buckets to form a list of guiding principles important to the group. The list included goals commonly associated with wellbeing, like connection to nature, emotional support, comfort and staying active. What was unique to Stradistas was the strong need for creative outlets, joyfulness, and inspiration.
Prototyping
We decided to prototype two distinct areas, one focusing on physical wellbeing, connection to nature, and joy, and the second supporting the need to unplug, find balance, and stay inspired.
We used light, color, sound, playful elements, and a lot of imagination to convey the mood of the spaces we wanted to create. This interactive process got our creativity flowing!
Testing, Gathering Feedback, Deep Diving
The next step involved testing the spaces, giving specific feedback, and asking additional questions to dig deeper into the topic. The discussion was very dynamic and informative and will serve as a reference in our design process on other projects.
Wellness Mapping
We then engaged the whole studio, and asked for an evaluation of our existing office through the wellness lens. We created a simple wellness map and asked for feedback in a form of happy and sad faces.
The results were eye-opening. It turns out that most of us love our kitchen café space, and we associate our large conference room with the least amount of wellbeing. This brings an intriguing question of relevance of this type of traditional setting in the future office space. What could the concept of conference room evolve into in the next 20-30 years?
Stay tuned!
