Wired: Sorriest Cubicle on Earth

One of the 7 Pillars for mindshift ties environment to performance. Wired provides fun look at the ghost of cubicles past.

Click here to read the article and see more of the sorriest cubicles on earth.

Google Streetview - mindshifting the globe

Google has added a new feature, Streetview. The map is now alive, a seamless span of live images.

Now when you travel you can see exactly what to expect; the neighborhood, the parking, the house or building.

1. How can you use this?
2. What about privacy for those who happen to show up in a photo?
   
3. What happens if your house is pictured while going through renovation just before you put it up for sale and that's the image someone sees while house hunting?
4. How might you use Streetview and Map Create for business and marketing?
   

Click here for an orientation on creating your own map.

The mindshift: maps go interactive with live images, data and search capability. Have our mental models for maps changed much, a means to figure out how to get from point "A" to point "B?"

There seems to be some innovative opportunities, but it will take a mindshift.

12 Days of Christmas mindshift

A pleasant change of pace while keeping true to theme of bringing about a mindshift.

PS: If you have not had a chance to view the blog recently - check some of the previous posts on Lean practices. This will become a major theme for 2008.

Evidenced Based Design

We've left the world Newtonian certainty and now surf in a sea of change. It's interesting that the path recommended by AIA is "Evidenced Based Design." Here are some excerpts from:

Four Levels of Evidence-Based Practice
By D. Kirk Hamilton, FAIA, FACHA

"The growing trend toward evidence-based design involves design work that is informed by data from a variety of sources. It is also a natural analog to the evidence-based decision making of our clients."

"Entering Harvard medical students are reportedly told, “Half of what you will learn is wrong, but we don’t yet know which half.” As new environmental studies are published, some decisions may be questioned, but conscientious architects will experience fewer doubts as they increase the percentage of decisions based on research. Environmental research is more likely to result in performance guidelines than in prescriptive regulation."

Click here to link to the whole article.

My take away:

Environments by definition are contextual - specific to the need and mix of people they address. Universal principles - aren't, when it comes to contextual application. Evidence based design requires a deep level of expertise - not only conceptual and intellectual - but client and project expertise.

Firms will prosper by becoming experts and demonstrating the value of that expertise.

Lean Basics

The Lean approach is not just a manufacturing method for greater efficiency. Lean is a mindset that focuses on what the client values and is willing to pay for. The basic idea is simple. Identify value, understand the flow of that value and eliminate the steps that do not contribute to either value or flow. Simple? In concept yes, however, a century of success focusing on an industrial approach to creating and making things is a hard habit to break.

The mindshift is that Lean is not a set of techniques but is a set of values through a holistic lens.

1. All members in the value stream bring value and provide value.
2. No part of the value stream can be improved in isolation to the whole.
3. The team learns by doing and reviewing.
   

This is a video showing Lean applied to healthcare - perfect! Lean appears to be a highly effective alternative to our century old industrial model of breaking the whole into its various sub-elements and focusing on the parts. Like the slogan from the old fast food commercial; "Parts is parts." Hmm - yum.

Smooth Predictable Flow

One key concept for Lean is smooth predictable flow. This Visa commercial provides a great illustration of the impact of unpredictable events on the flow of a project.

Linear vs. Collaborative

Take a moment to watch this video exercise.

Round one takes a conventional linear approach to assemble and note the inevitable collisions and bottlenecks.

Round two takes a collaborative approach. See the difference.

We're introducing the idea of Lean Construction as one of the tools for an Integrated Platform and Integrated Delivery. Turner Construction has one of the top Lean construction managers in the industry.

We will pass along some of the basic ideas behind Lean Construction and a list of reading. For now I hope the video provides a compelling image and mindshift.

A good friend from Disney Imagineering sent a list of trends in the architectural and building market. The list was developed by The Greenway Consulting Group.

During the same week another friend and president for a national design firm copied me on the following note:

Jim, In the cab en route to join you today. Looking forward to it. Meanwhile, it occurs to me what a potential serendipity between the Design Futures Council and mindshift might have. Rex, please hit Jim’s at www.greenway.us. You’ll be impressed with how Jim’s organization is dealing with the same issues we discussed yesterday.

Here are some of those trends:

Design-Build service delivery will grow at 2.1 - 2.8 percent annual rate in the US but with significant variations depending on geography and building type. This will substantially affect issues of risk management, since so many formerly competitive entities will be linked by contractual bonds. Essentially this is a “master builder” trend.

Integrated and more overtly collaborative professional practices can be expected in planning, architecture, interior design, engineering, landscape architecture, construction, and facility management. Project management will be enhanced through round the clock web sites with new procedures, protocols, and processes.

Talent shortages will intensify in architecture, design, engineering, construction, and landscape architecture. Supply-demand economics raises base pay by an average of 6.7 percent in 2007 and 6.1 percent in 2008.

The continued, rapid, adoption of BIM Technology will proceed with significant new training programs and expansions implemented in late 2007 and 2008.

Demographics and generational changes will alter the context for professional service delivery, creating a need for new communication plans, new marketing programs, and new design experiences. The generational divide requires new design solutions: 0-10 Digital from Birth; 11-30 Generation Now; 31-40 Generation X; 41-60 Zoomers; 61+ Prime Timers.

Significant process differentiation in project and design management will lead to trademark and branding campaigns. Design firms will use copyright and trademark differentiation as part of their new value proposition’s high definition.

Fast architecture models will be adopted by traditional firms. Speed is a strategic value proposition and firms will invent ways to deliver, proving that speed is not the enemy of quality.

Knowledge worker migration favors coastal, southern, and western geographies in the United States. Expect merger and acquisition activity to aggressively include firms in these locations where a workforce is motivated to locate.

Green and sustainable design is sought after by clients who are increasing the expectations for expertise and advisement in the design professions. Firms without green repute will become anti-strategic in the marketplace.

Strategic partitioning, modular structures, and factory built units will see increasing investments and are expected to play a far larger role in housing, retail, residential, manufacturing, and K-12 facilities construction. One of the legacies of hurricane Katrina is the accelerated growth and popularity of increasingly well designed modular building.

Professional workers from other external knowledge professions will enter the design professions serving in expert roles, especially in healthcare design, and education design. In addition, watch for anthropologists, real estate developers, and college presidents to join the boards of top design and construction firms.

Lifecycle design will become a dynamic new service offering for professional practices that will take contractual responsibility for structures over their useful life. Clients understand that taking care of their buildings is a smart investment and who better than the original designers to take responsibility for the buildings stewardship.

Generalist practitioners will fade from the professions. Interviews with 250 leading North American clients indicate that specializations will grow because clients seek:

• Deep expertise and competence
• Repute by building type
• Trust and confidence in a specialized zone
• Familiarity and comfort

Outsourcing will increasingly become prevalent and prescient, particularly in India where language and training match with quality expectations. India is second only to Canada in their application of LEED building standards.

Intelligent buildings will become the norm. They will anticipate, have “smart” walls and floors, and be constructed with computerized components that will utilize artificial intelligence in every aspect of the building.

Zero energy buildings will be created that produce more energy than they consume. Watch for corporate offices and high-density residences that serve as neighborhood power plants using latest in sustainable technology. Pearl River Tower, at 77 stories, is both office and power plant – giving back energy to the grid.

Thanks largely to BIM, there will be radical tort reform in construction liability. Expect lower E and O insurance premiums.

Intelligence, talent, wisdom, maturity of judgment, and vision – not licensure or technology, become the primary differentiators for design professionals seeking best practice performance. But licensure is critical to HSW in increasingly uncertain times.