Innovative Spaces Project
Faculty Mentor Name
Hadi Ali, Rose Danek, Kathy Wood
Format Preference
Poster
Abstract
Innovation is the driving force behind technological and economic advancements. However, challenges exist in creating spaces which encourage collaboration, communication and innovation. Our project, Innovative Spaces, questions traditional educational spaces in their suitability to encourage innovation. We explore this by developing a survey instrument to understand the reciprocal relationship between users and the space: how the environment affects a user’s behavior and how the user affects the environment. The data collected will help in measuring the malleability of the innovation space. Furthermore, the data will assess the design efficacy of users (both students and faculty) and their expectancy of the value gained in manipulating the space (to achieve certain communicative or collaborative goals). Ultimately, our goal is to identify a list of properties that make a space inspiring for an innovative, communicative and collaborative culture, and ones which can be easily implemented into innovative spaces. These properties could be in the form of easily accessible creative materials, infrastructure that provides an avenue to easily prototype ideas, or seating arrangements that focus more on peer communication and ideation.
Innovative Spaces Project
Innovation is the driving force behind technological and economic advancements. However, challenges exist in creating spaces which encourage collaboration, communication and innovation. Our project, Innovative Spaces, questions traditional educational spaces in their suitability to encourage innovation. We explore this by developing a survey instrument to understand the reciprocal relationship between users and the space: how the environment affects a user’s behavior and how the user affects the environment. The data collected will help in measuring the malleability of the innovation space. Furthermore, the data will assess the design efficacy of users (both students and faculty) and their expectancy of the value gained in manipulating the space (to achieve certain communicative or collaborative goals). Ultimately, our goal is to identify a list of properties that make a space inspiring for an innovative, communicative and collaborative culture, and ones which can be easily implemented into innovative spaces. These properties could be in the form of easily accessible creative materials, infrastructure that provides an avenue to easily prototype ideas, or seating arrangements that focus more on peer communication and ideation.