Design spaces

While we are careful not to isolate ourselves as a design team, we do have a few design-specific spaces. These can be used by cross-functional teams when they need a large space to work through a tough problem for an extended period of time. The space is modular, so it can be configured to host large or small teams comfortably. Every surface is writable to allow teams to easily visualize. Power comes from the ceiling, so if desks are needed they can be located anywhere on the floor. It’s like being able to have an offsite within your own office.

Our design space has fully writeable walls and can be configured into 1 or 4 areas

Applying it to your office

You don’t need a specialized design space to encourage creativity. Start small. Get a few comfy chairs or a sofa and create a space away from people’s desks where they can go and work individually or as a small team. Consider replacing a board room table with smaller tables on wheels. Meeting room facilitation kits can be purchased for under $100 from any stationery store, and are extremely effective at keeping meetings on track.

Encouraging ongoing iteration

Great design is never done. We need to challenge ourselves to always be improving. Putting work into a digital format too quickly gives it a finality that discourages iteration on an idea. We encourage all teams to stay lo-fidelity for as long as possible, to allow an idea to breathe and grow. This is why we heavily use the very walls that hold up our building to visualize our work. Publicly displaying work encourages feedback from our wider teams and is vital to iterating successfully on an idea. Our walls have evolved over time and we have now split our walls into three distinct categories.

Exhibition

An exhibition wall showcases the key designs that a team is working through at that moment.

Post-its and markers for ad hoc feedback

The design must have the context set visibly on the wall. The persona the flow is intended for, for instance, and when a customer will see it.

We also must display an end-to-end journey. We don’t want to design screens in silos and we’re interested in the end-to-end experience. We add feedback tools (like green and red dots to indicate likes or dislikes, Post-it notes, markers, etc.) to the wall which encourage people to give input as they walk past. We hold informal sparring (feedback) sessions at the walls as well.

All-purpose

We used to have whiteboards on wheels. We’ve progressed to much larger walls covered in whiteboard paint.

Now almost every wall surface in our office is covered in glass whiteboards. Because to properly iterate on an idea, you need to visualize, sketch out a flow, rub it out, draw something again, get feedback, rub out the idea, create a new one, get feedback, and use that feedback to build on top of your idea until you finally have something. This process can be messy, but the old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” is very true. It’s much easier to show a colleague an idea than it is to just talk about it. These walls encourage the iteration process that adds up to good design.

Transient

Transient wall with end-to-end journey displayed

The craft movement is alive and well. And we have embraced old school foam core at Atlassian to create transient walls. These allow us to take our designs wherever we go. If we need to take them into a meeting to discuss with a team we can, and then take them back to our desks to continue iterating on them. They’ve been very effective in helping us keep conversations moving and iterating on our work.

Applying it to your office

Start small. You don’t need entire walls filled with expensive whiteboards. Start with any wall and get an end-to-end journey visualized. Set the context of the designs so that the wider team feels comfortable giving the right kind of feedback. Change the designs regularly (every two weeks) so that your team sees the progress and how the work is evolving.

Encouraging creativity

At the heart of design thinking is creativity. Designers are inherently creative and embrace the ambiguity of a creative process. But how do you encourage that creativity in cross-functional teams who might be less used to this type of work? We don’t design in silos, so it’s our job to make sure that other disciplines are engaged and involved in the design process.

Statement areas

We have a number of statement walls around the office. Walls filled with curated quotes from designers, makers, and engineers who help inspire us.

And walls filled with neon lights that shift in hue over time…