Meeting the need…
In Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTRs) and other hybrid meeting rooms, of course we consider the room, the technology. But what about the meeting itself?
Meetings are part of everyday life. We have a co-dependent relationship with them, plus all the positive – and toxic – associations. They are regarded as a necessary evil, often referred to with accompanying eye-rolling and raised eyebrows. Meetings allocated at, say, one hour will mystifyingly usually take exactly that one hour, where otherwise professional and disciplined folk abdicate any hope or expectation of controlling their own time as they file through the door.
Meeting rooms remain places where, as in the old phrase, ‘two or more people gather together’. But to do what? We don’t go into a meeting room to have a meeting, we go in there to get stuff done.
The modern meeting room might be equipped with the most incredible technology, but they might also host the most dysfunctional of meetings. Dysfunctionality is a function of behaviour. In this context we look at behaviour through two lenses: the behaviours people bring into the room and the behaviours the room itself fosters or influences.
Take the humble chair. There’s a widely held assumption that a good meeting room chair is one of those swivelly things on castors. With arms, of course. Not so fast. In a room where you have senior people there to conduct sober or formal business, is it fair to the ones who exhibit nervous tics or displacement activity that they’ll have their twitchy tendencies exaggerated by the spatial freedoms afforded by the chair – and introduce unnecessary movement and distraction to both in-person and remote participants?
Creating meeting spaces that foster positivity, efficiency, creativity and great communication - and across the divide marked by the VC camera(s) - is not about spending money. It’s the very opposite.
Creating exceptional meeting room UX is about doing the right work in the right depth to create the right shopping list. Start with the wrong list and you risk programming mediocrity or even failure into meeting rooms
Disaggregation, the breaking of our subject down into cogent granular elements is an approach we take not just in terms of displays, lighting, furniture etc, at Greg Jeffreys Consulting (GJC). We also have categories for how we specify and assess them.
And this is about remembering that it’s humans who occupy our spaces.
Posted: 7th June 2023