The physical centerpiece of the 100K Ideas organization has always been the idea desk. With a neighboring vendor expanding, 100K needed to create a brand new desk, while addressing concerns about the original desk.
The original idea desk not only acted as our front door, but also a billboard for our services and staging area for events.The desk included a quirky and interactive 'gameboard' that allowed people to visually track their progress through our process.Despite all the good, with the new design we hoped to do even better and address some of the problems with the old design.
Due to the expansion of our neighboring print shop, 100K would be losing 60 sq ft of the space once occupied by the idea desk/gameboard.
Just as we recommend for our clients, projects always start with a Product Requirements Doc. We broke it down into our 'Must Have's', 'Nice to Have's', and 'Considerations'.
This is where a lot of the concept ideation came together. Emphasis was on visibility and movement of people through space.
Working with the management at the Ferris Wheel we came up with a 3 part desk that could be pulled out during office hours and stored away when closed or during events.
The desk would occupy some of the central space of the Ferris Wheel.
Dot key:
Blue = Staff
Orange = Community/Customers
Black = empty chairs
At night the desk would fit in the nook leftover from the reduced space.
These concepts were created as potential solutions to address security considerations, but was later solved when the Pandemic struck and plexiglass was installed.
These were crucial in understanding the physical and visual impact of design choices on the space as a whole, as well as selling the design to all stakeholders.
The center desk was to be constructed by Divide by Design, a company closely affiliated with our organization that uses a system of modular beams to create flexible office space.
I created final illustrations with complete dimensioning laid out for the engineers to create their CAD. We worked with them on getting the final product as close to the original vision as possible.
A big part of the original desk was the interactive 'gameboard' that clients could use to see their progress through our process. This was also a key visual aid when it came to explaining our process to a prospective client.
The original gameboard was worked on by Wesley Woo, friend and fellow designer. Check out his site for that project: wesleywoo.com
For the new desk, a new gameboard that could make it easier to explain our process easier was a key factor in the design of the desk.
A lot from the old design would remain the same: the glass countertop, the 'idea tokens' (stamped metal disks), vinyl stickers would be used for the design.
One idea we worked on was using the front face to display ideas that had 'graduated' through our process. The final desk sports a simpler logo and tag line design.
After leaving the organization, the responsibility of the final design for the vinyl graphics was left to another designer.
