DU061 - Designing Spaces - Anna Lee Interview

Introduction

0:00hello everyone and welcome to design untangled with me chris mears and carla lindarte how are you doing i'm very good how are you yep good thanks i'm very excited today because i don't know if you remember three years ago but when we set up this podcast we always wanted to

0:32talk about design in a wider sense and not just kind of making apps and websites so we're joined by a very special guest today anna lee who's a senior interior designer hiya hi how are you doing

Interior Design Definition

0:44welcome to the podcast normally how we start is if you could just give people a bit of kind of background about yourself and how you got into interior design yeah sure so i'm an interior designer for commercial workplaces so i think very early on i was really interested in just creating things and putting things together and how things worked to perform a certain function so through my study and travels i learned everything from textiles interiors graphics so i did a bit

1:15of letterpress to doing a bit of um architecture urban design and town planning in uni so i kind of just all culminated and i landed my first position in sydney as an interior designer that specialized in workplace and strategy so it's kind of been a rolling stone ever since that sounds really really interesting i i might i'm gonna ask you a question that might be a bit maybe annoy you sometimes because people think interior designers are um just people who can come and dress a room you know or decorate a room but i would like you to kind of like explain our audience as well what

1:51what's the definition of interior design and why is it different from just someone who can you know buy some nice furniture and put it together in a room yeah that i guess that's a very hotly top debated topic yeah i can probably just i will speak for myself so um i think my work is a very wide scope um so only part of my job is to pick up furnishes um sorry furnishings finishes uh design the aesthetics of the space but realistically the scope is much more working closely with the client

2:25to understand the user behaviors uh goals value values aspirations and working with the engineers and architects to make it come to life um so we're kind of much more in tune with the construction detailing as well as helping the client realize their end goals bit of a bigger scope so when a

Client Briefs

2:44client kind of comes to you is it quite common that they don't really have a very clear idea what they're after are they looking for you to kind of give that to them or are there some clients who have a very clear vision of what they want but they don't necessarily know how to get there yeah that's an interesting one because i think um people are becoming more and more educated about the workspace i mean even now um with the whole experience of covid people have a much greater affinity to how they like to work where they like to work the kind of space that makes them most

3:16productive so people are a little bit more in tune with um workspace design nowadays i think or i guess interiors or like when when you go to a retail space um people are a lot more um informed about what they want from a product or what they want from the shopping experience so some some do know quite um what they want to achieve whereas others definitely need a bit more hand-holding and we would definitely help them through that process and how do you um balance especially now that you mentioned

3:49covid and new restrictions etc how you balance like look versus function and obviously regulations

Balancing Function and Aesthetics

3:59yeah so um firstly we must meet the function of design if the design isn't functional then there's no value there um but in terms of balancing the aesthetics of it um i think that yeah it doesn't just if it doesn't work on a basic level and um meet the regulations of social distancing and um uh being safe with reducing contact of spaces so one of one project that we're actually working on now

4:33we're doing our best to make the whole thing contactless so all the doors are automatic um you've got a very much uh integrated uh app and uh building management system that helps the user control the space without actually touching it um you have uh the impervious surfaces so they don't uh they're antimicrobial and those kind of things if you educate your end user with it they become a lot more comfortable in the space that they're using i think with covid a big driver of it is fear um fear for

5:10personal safety fear for wellness and you just don't know so part of that is trying to help create a comfortable environment so that's you know um like where we like even for our own offices now we're looking at um re-entry and the whole one-way system is marked on the ground but then the whole uh everyone uses the warning tape you know it's like this horrible stuff that you just stick onto the ground yeah it's like a police line do not cross exactly like a few chalk bodies on the

5:45floor yes exactly and so there's lots of different ways and you can achieve the same behavior without using those kind of visual cues um i had a quick one around sort of designing spaces for covid are clients and companies seeing this as i guess a bit more tactical and something that's not going to be in place forever or are they designing these spaces with the view that this is going to be around for a long time and that is how the space needs to operate for you know 10 20 years maybe yeah i think

6:16that's it again it's an interesting combination of both it's there's still very mixed responses um in the industry right now some people are quite hesitant of of making kind of any changes until they look at the more long-term future so they don't believe that covid and social distancing will have a real place once i guess a vaccine is found or we manage to um develop enough immunity for it to effectively go away and to an extent everyone's going to resume some kind of normalcy in terms of being able to

6:51go back to a common place of work um of course a lot of it is already driven by cost i mean everyone's vacated their offices and um it's become almost redundant so there's been a lot of cost cutting going on so i guess the two in combination you're not going to go into a scenario where you have these massive office spaces so that people can stay two meters away from each other but like the example i gave before it's companies are a lot more aware of the need to

7:24future-proof risk-proof have contingency planning so definitely working in these kind of like contactless experiences using digital technologies um and making sure that we can work both remotely and in the office in a very seamless experience is becoming a lot more predominant so you mentioned some of the trends um like people becoming more aware of how they want a workplace to work um i'm just curious if any of those trends aligned with sort of the way you're now designing spaces

7:58for covid like were there any aspects of that or are they completely separate things like were people naturally wanting to to have more space around them and get away from people a bit or is it just a completely different set of rules now i've um never really actually thought about that it's i guess human needs have been quite consistent um in general um i mean companies have for at least maybe the past 10 years been trying to cram everyone into as little space as possible and desk sharing and

8:32it's becoming quite um you get a little bit on top of each other and it's not too pleasant but because now that we are able to almost balance it out so a big problem with the open plan offices is that you don't give people enough privacy in in the workplace um to do those like private calls or like um focus work or you you might have some a report that you just want to churn out but you need some focus time uh office really needs to be or a modern office at least should really accommodate all the

9:06different behaviors of work and not just oh here's an open space and you make a way to work it so it's giving the right typology yeah it's like a trend of like having a little bit of privacy is going coming back again it's weird isn't it that happens i have a question around the technology like it's interesting that you're currently working in a contactless um space because you know we've seen throughout the years like people trying to innovate around you know using voice using gestures like we know the automotive industry trying to use gestures but they that technology is actually

9:40quite clunky still so i wonder if um you know based on your experience like first of all if the technology you think is is actually quite good right now and if you are involving um actual customers in the testing of that technology at all um yeah i guess not so much testing of the technology because then we usually have a technology specialist um who would come on board and do all of that that kind of stuff um and make it work technically speaking but as interior designers we work very closely to make

10:16sure that whatever technology is implemented actually adds value to the whether it be the customer experience the the everyday user experience or the outlook of the company so it's not just technology for technology's sake um otherwise it becomes a redundant investment so we work closely with the technology company and understand what they can achieve and a big part of that is understanding the content as well a big problem is oh like the client really wants to have these massive screens or they want to seem

10:50very technologically enabled but they can't produce content fast enough to make it um meaningful and valuable so we work through like little problems like this uh and making sure that the correct product is provided to the client and we accommodate it in the space in a kind of integrated way and so some of this stuff obviously might take quite a while to to implement like you know actually building it and stuff

11:22so is there any thing you do to iteratively test this stuff like is that even possible without actually physically sort of making the thing um no so we would do prototypes maybe a smaller scale prototype um that's usually a big big aspect of that in just to make sure it works but um because we normally work with a specialist um we don't have to i guess um but yeah i mean digital elements are

11:55really key i think for us in in two kind of ways so the user side of things the whole signature tech is really big i don't know if that if you guys are involved in that kind of stuff with high-end commercial clients um where the technology really pays a big part in communicating the the company's values uh what they're about the transition of media it's really about helping to provide a deeper user engagement and content delivery within a space so it's not just screens but like um maybe

12:29adaptive personalization or proximity detection devices that's really simple like it you just arrive and then a sensor senses you but then a screen greets you um with a personalized message or like um you getting notifications of a meeting maybe the day before your meeting and then you come to the client's um client's welcome uh reception area and it's like a concierge rather than a traditional uh clunky reception desk and you know this receptionist is sitting on a barrier on the other

13:05side of of you but they come up and greet you and they already know who you are because they've sensed your um arrival into the building or they they know exactly what the schedule is and they welcome you with a your favorite drink as you come into the office so it no that would be nice gin and tonic at 9am but um yeah like there's so many things we're using and like on the more operational side of things like we're talking with the contactless experience with the whole

13:35covid situation now we're so used to being all of these this kind of like digital tech where we're having web meetings and um hosting um workshops online we we can access people so quickly you know before we had to might travel like half an hour into london and and um have a meeting but now all that you don't need to do so when people go back into the office it's important that the office has all of these technologies to continue to support these kind of interactions even if you aren't in the

14:07office i don't know how many offices right now can support that yeah that's the thing isn't it that not many companies would have the money and access to because it's similar to what happened with the retail spaces right a lot of people kind of created these connector store concepts and you know the screens the um you know that you put in the people you know in the changing rooms etc um but then only very few of them actually managed to do it at scale because it's ridiculously expensive so i wonder obviously

14:40that's not necessarily your your you know your feel but you know technology companies should try and make that more affordable because otherwise it's not it's never going to happen for everyone um trying to step back a little bit um and changing the subject i would be interesting to know because

Design Process

14:57obviously chris and i are designers and our listeners are designers as well um what's the process for an interior designer since like as you get the brief you know what's the first thing you do and then kind of like you know in very high level what are the steps that you follow to actually deliver a project okay so i guess in a very high level there's maybe four steps that we go through so firstly we get the brief but we review the brief so question it um maybe challenge the status quo and you try to

15:30understand what the client is really wanting out of it so they might ask you that for a really funky space but they're probably imagining a space with maybe feature colored walls but for someone else it might be slides and beanbags so we it's really important to clarify the brief and then we issue a reverse brief back to the client so it's almost like a formal document that we need the client to sign off to acknowledge that we both understand what their high level aspirations are um and then if we need to do any more work we'll go through to do workshop and user engagement exercises so what

16:07do they sorry what do those workshops look like like what what happens so there's a whole series of different ones that we do um we do say for example um there's visual cards so then we have a whole series of almost cue cards with um images of spaces on them um of different kind of spaces different aesthetics and then we ask the key um stakeholders in the session to mark what they like and what they don't like about it so that helps immediately um erase kind of any vagueness in aesthetic differences

16:41you know people people's uh how people relate to aesthetics and describe it using language is very different so then we get an understanding of what what that might look like um we do exercises to understand their risks and aspirations so say for example we do a uh pre-mortem so hypothetically speaking if you uh if we fit it out your office and a year later it fails miserably what happened and then yeah that's a classic um workshop as well i've used that one before yeah it's good because

17:15it does for most people they haven't really been asked those kind of questions yeah what else we do a whole host of like day in the life of to understand their work work processes especially in terms of workplace um what are the key functions that they perform so then the kind of spaces that they need um and then also aspirations branding culture um which also kind of tease out what um change management needs to take place so for example if you have a very traditional company and

17:46they're used to working on one-to-one desks as in everyone has an assigned desks it's very hard to them for them to get into an agile environment where you're expecting them to share the space and work um with you know great flexibility and um work essentially wherever they choose but the behaviors associated with using such a space is very different so we try to understand really where the baseline is at and um uh also we do a lot of uh occupation studies as well so actually

18:17understanding how they utilize their space those occupation studies is more like observation on like existing you know people working and how they actually do it is that how do you kind of include all the customer or not yeah both so we we uh it sounds creepy but we watch them work and then take notes uh so observing the behavior and um just you know that's kind of like what happens day to day from a almost an objective third party perspective but also we do a count of actually how much of their

18:52space is utilized as a percentage over the day over the week um and it understands if you're just looking at the workplace as a infrastructure how often they actually use this this investment so then that way we can help them making um if they need to make real estate decisions to say for example if they don't really use their space effectively and most people are actually out of office because of the nature of their work they can maybe reduce their floor plate go rent somewhere

19:22where it's um more prime real estate have a better status i guess and um more opportunity to bring clients in and it might help elevate their brand even though cost wise it's neutral yeah well that's really interesting so you mentioned there's like kind of four steps right so the first just to recap the first one you take the brief you understand that the second one you kind of like replay and use all these methods design methods to shape that you know the brief on the project and give

19:52recommendations to clients so what would be the other two steps yeah so the third step would be the actual concept design um coming up with an idea for the space um it's very important at this stage stage for interior designers to actually develop a concept so say for example it could be it could be something very vague like um uh i'll give one one really good example is a hotel i went to in um hong kong it's like this boutique hotel it's um not the fanciest in the world it's one of those

20:26like smaller like hole in the wall ones but it's incredible and the whole thing is designed around a series of photographs this um this guy took of um a lake in sweden called lake tuve so it's that very scandinavian stark quiet lake absolutely still misty and it looks so chilling and haunting but um it has this incredible mystery to it so then how do you convert these kind of like emotional reactions and senses to this into a physical form so for us that's what

21:07is a really interesting thing how then you take the elements of design which might be you know you've got all everything like color shape line and all of those elements and principles but then you're actually translating it into a physical reality aesthetic reality where you can touch and feel and sense it and uh bring it to life essentially it's the most incredible little hotel so how did that could you give like an example of how that hotel yeah so as you go in the whole thing was about like you

21:37with the kind of starkness of of that scandinavian lake and the icy coolness the moment you go in they've got raw concrete um barriers and it's a it's an arch so then it's incredibly raw and textural but then the floor is this amazingly dark marble with this um hazy foggy pattern going all the way through it and it's there was no directional lighting it was all all indirect lighting with strip strip led lights from on the floor so it was dark and moody and then as you go through this

22:07passageway you still haven't gone to the hotel yet you find this beautifully little um coved elevator and you go into the elevator and you come out and then the lobby is completely clad in a sheet metal and it's got these holes perforated through it in like a abstract manner with lighting in the back creating almost like sparkling effect that's random and stark against the really cold materials of that space but it was so simple and so minimalistic there wasn't that traditional um hotel kind of reception

22:43desk it was just one square stone slab almost like a um almost like an altar and a style just this monolithic shape and then the concierge would be behind it it was all integrated so everything just pushed in it was remarkable it was completely seamless after they pushed in their like the keyboard trays and all of that and um they used lighting to create very stark uh visual patterns on the floor just in terms of how it interacted with space and the other elements of the space and so this

23:19it's still quite cold and mysterious and foggy but the moment you get into your room everything was kind of clean and peaceful using light colors natural materials and white walls and again there wasn't any kind of directional lighting so it didn't feel harsh it was almost like you know the crack of dawn when the light's just bleeding through the horizon the the light in the ceiling was uh instead of just fitting it into like a plasterboard ceiling it was coved so it actually didn't have any hard edges and the

23:53light just fell across the surface it was amazing and um there was a white bed with the most the smoothest linen you can ever feel and a timber box in the corner of the room and you go up to it and it's just like a a box you don't know what it is it's probably the size of a mini fridge if not bigger but then you open it and it's like a japanese jewelry box it completely opens up to form your little tea coffee area and it's got your mini fridge and drinks and then it's folded out to reveal your desk and your

24:26little um desk chair so the whole thing was just so well considered and i guess the more minimal it is with any kind of design the more resolved and the more effort it's taken to kind of get to that clean design it was great making me want to go on holiday yeah it just transported me to a different space but yeah it's those kind of concepts that's really helps you drive the choice of materials drives how you choose to design the space the the lines um how you how you create shapes in in a space

25:01basically kind of helps you relate to the 3d space around you you create prototypes for it like are they just like miniature versions of prototypes or do you create a space that kind of brings to life some of the yeah so we use all different types of methods depending on the timeline for the project if it's really special and you have to create a product for the design so you work with an industrial designer you would absolutely create a prototype or if you have a little space easy as a cardboard model would help you understand the proportions within the space um but nowadays to technology and

25:393d modeling just helps you so much as well i was just going to ask to what extent do you try and put your mark on the stuff you do like would there be any way to tell you know oh yeah and leaders design that space or is it purely down to like it's all about the client essentially and you're just there to sort of facilitate their vision yeah um i think there's always an element that you can put your mark into the space um for most clients it's extremely important that the function is is

26:12there so it works how they want to and for the average client it doesn't go much beyond that so so long as the design is nice and clean um but just like i guess with with uh say poetry you can definitely once you read a certain poem you know it belongs to a certain poet by the way they use their phrases by the way they shape their words by the way they um create sense of imagery i think for the similarly with a designer you can understand how they use their line or like their preference for

26:45a certain kind of color i mean for me personally i try not to have a personal style in that way um just because also it's a lot more interesting and you get to try lots of different things and um yeah i think a personal style is like quite luxurious actually unless you're like a unless you're like a hot truck designer where everyone's after your personal look um most people do try and um try something different and try something new so then what you're designing for a

27:18client is unique every time just going back to you four steps sorry i just keep yeah i went to another world and came back um then i guess you obviously prototype as you mentioned

Project Delivery and Evaluation

27:33and the fourth step would be obviously deliver the project yeah yeah i was just gonna ask obviously what that fourth step and like kind of entails and also if there is any or if you guys actually monitor the effectiveness of the space normally yeah so um okay so starting with the fourth step um it's the construction drawing so then our package essentially to of information that we give to the contractors or builders or manufacturers as to what needs to be created so that includes all the

28:07construction drawings or the schedules or the specifications that kind of thing so we work closely with um the project managers the um the mechanical engineers the electrical engineers to make sure that everything is correct um we do all the drawings as well so then because like all the structural details of us even stuff as boring as like a wall like how a wall is constructed we would detail all that up so i think going back to your point earlier about um interior decorator versus interior designer we look at a lot of the structural details and we make sure that everything complies

28:41according to local codes and regulations as well um and then after that is all delivered or checking on site that the builders actually build what you've designed um making sure the detail is correct making sure everything is to the level of um quality that the client is after uh and then just making sure that the client is happy in the space so that's everything from just personal feedback um just touching base with the client regularly but we also do um post occupancy evaluation so very similar to um the early stage um when we're just doing the

29:19workplace strategy but almost in reverse so asking them how they feel about the new space um we've got using surveys um again going back with utilization study to see if people are using the space more often um and then a lot of our work is with repeat customers so then the space is constantly evolving and we might need to go back to do some tweaks for them six months on track um you know it it a lot of

29:52spaces now are adaptive so then it's just about oh we can shift a few things here and there but some other people might actually discover a greater need for things so then they might build more meeting rooms or they might reshuffle how their entrance or their client experience is that kind of thing yeah is it painful because i when i used to design like apps and websites and then once you give them to a client they just completely destroy them with the content that they are is it as painful when you go there it's like oh my god what have you done yeah it's a learning experience i guess i mean

30:26you can't control everything and once it's out of your hands it's the client's product yeah what do you prefer do you prefer redesigning spaces or just coming like you know white canvas and doing something completely new yeah i think having a white canvas and doing something completely new is often scary and exciting and definitely leads to more opportunities but um redesigning something also gives you a better appreciation of being very sympathetic to the existing way of things so it's

30:58hard for you to bring in new behaviors or a new way to use the space or change people's perception of something rather than just starting afresh and being this is completely new for you and um working people towards that just before we wrap up and carla ask a trademark question at the end um obviously we spoke about the the kind of hotel that you described there are there any other spaces that maybe are a bit more well known you know maybe in and around london or any other cities um that you

31:31think are worth people checking out and you think have kind of delivered their vision in a particularly good way yeah um well i mean i think uh one really easy one to go see is the um vna exhibitions i i find that they the ones that they curate and you have to pay for um they actually do extremely well in creating a very sensory experience not just whatever what the exhibits that you're looking at physically looking at but the whole space in which you um explore um i think both london and sydney where

32:07i'm from do the open city kind of things so particular historical buildings or office spaces where is not generally open to the public they do tools occasionally so then some of these office spaces are very worth going to um i think one uh one project that i was involved in back in sydney was um we did the pwc uh client floors for sydney and melbourne so what my design director did for at the time for melbourne was that are you familiar with the pwc logo how it's got the like orange and red and yellow squares

32:44kind of on top of each other so part of that vision was really being strong with the brand but then how do you communicate um how do you communicate that a but also represent a very collaborative environment with both their client and users blah blah blah and um there's this remarkable staircase that goes through three three stories um and it's basically these boxes completely exploded across this void and each of these boxes are meeting rooms suspended in that space so then it glows and you can walk on top of

33:16them so then the the whole staircase is a very kind of um interactive zone where again you know the whole opportunity to bump into people to interact with people and to see into different spaces meanwhile inside those meeting rooms are obviously functional and you can work in them um but yeah um yeah looking at like lots of different spaces where vision comes to life there's go to go to those exhibitions basically oh wow that's that's really good i mean i i really

33:47i really liked um talking to you because it's just so obvious how design as a practice as a you know overarching practice has so so many similarities right because yeah yeah you know the steps that you follow well you know as you tackle a brief are very similar to what we would do i like designing something else it's just obviously the the scale is different and the the the um the skill set is different but it yeah it's surprising and you know that how you know design can cover so many things

34:18um just to i always ask this question and i think actually after talking to you it would be really good if you could recommend obviously you already could recommend that how where to go to see like good spaces and stuff but if there's any books or podcasts or other resources that you can recommend to designers not necessarily to become an interior designer because obviously you have to have a form of training and experience to do that but how can they you know by reading about interior design they can then apply

34:50that to their design um jobs you know wherever they are uh i've got two books that would be very interesting they're not particularly specific to interior design but um very much to design in general um one's pattern language by christopher alexander um it is well basically um him and his colleagues have identified uh what 250 something patterns of space and basically the the point is all of

35:21these patterns can be put in a certain order and a certain combination to achieve a certain effect to a user and that's the pattern language combine different patterns you get a different language um but i i think it's also very much used in uh computer programming in understanding the logic of of things but yeah that's definitely one to check down and also emotional design why we love or hate everyday things by don norman so he's very interesting and he talks a lot more about the user experience of

35:55design so after it's left the designer's hands who's got all these ideas of like aesthetics and um material and all of that after that how does the user actually just then interact with it and he divides it into a visceral behavioral and reflective design so why it makes so much meaning to us but um yeah very general but um i think they were very profound to me cool awesome we'll link those up in the the show notes as well so people can check those out um so yeah i think that's all we had so thank

36:31you very much for joining us that was super interesting enjoyed going to that hotel with you yeah thank you so much literally the way you describe it i was like oh my god thank you so much search and subscribe to design untangled using your favorite podcast app and leave us a review follow us on the web at design untangled.co.uk or on twitter at design untangled become a better designer with online mentoring at uxmentor.me you