This article comes from:knowledge author: rain sleep, from head Figure: vision China

LEAPX is almost two years old, and a new office is desperately needed. As a design team, we also have high requirements for office functions and aesthetics. How can we create a comfortable and easy-to-use office for our discerning designers?

Before founding LEAPX, the author worked at Microsoft headquarters, and when I was in the United States, I also visited the working environment of Apple, Google, IDEO, fuseproject and other international design companies. They have their own advantages and disadvantages, which are enviable. Linyuan Xianyu, it is better to retreat to the net. If a designer can’t even design his own working environment, how can he be sure to design the experience of others?

So we decided to design this matter as a formal product project based on the needs of our designers. It can not only create the most suitable office environment for you, increase happiness and work efficiency, but also exercise team skills and increase the sense of ownership by the way.

▵One of the reference books

Although humans have evolved to today have high intelligence, They are not physically different from other mammals. The mental and psychological state will be greatly affected by the environment. These influences have many in psychology. researchResearch. In order to have a scientific theory of knowledge to guide our design, I first found relevant videos and text materials to learn. One of the books The Best Place To Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace” The art and science of the extraordinary office environment” provides a lot of effective guidance.

It mentioned that although there are many researches related to office and work efficiency so far, few companies will apply the conclusions of these researches to practice. Especially today when the per capita output value of technology companies is so high, If a reasonable working environment design is adopted to increase work efficiency and output by 10%, it is also very valuable.

The first is site selection. Two research results are mentioned in the book:

  • Being in a high-ceiling space can improve people’s abstract connection and creative thinking;

  • Being close to the window, with good natural lighting, and an outdoor work environment can effectively reduce anxiety and increase work output; indoor green plants also have a similar effect;

These two points have become the rigid requirements for our site selection: High floor height, high window opening rate, and good outdoor views. After more than ten days of investigation and comparison, our new office was finally selected in the north area of ​​the Science Park, which is very quiet and full of green outside the window. There are two walls with open floor-to-ceiling windows, and two outdoor balconies. The storey height is also maintained at about 3.3 meters.

After selecting the site, it is time to design the layout of the office. There are generally three types of modern offices:

  • Cubicles|Grid Room

  • Private Offices|Private Office

  • Open Offices|Open Office

▵Cubicles|Grid Room

The traditional grid room provides good privacy and quietness, which is good for personal output, but is not good for communication and cooperation between teams. At the same time, the field of vision and activity space are very narrow and depressing. It has a long-term negative effect on the mental health of employees, prone to depression and tiredness of work. Many traditional companies love to use it, but it is no longer suitable for modern office needs that value cooperation.

▵Private Offices|Private Office

Although the private office environment is good for individuals, complete isolation is not conducive to timely and improvised exchanges and cooperation. Many private offices generally monopolize the lighting and scenery of the large outdoor windows, which is also a waste.Share this scarce resource in the public area to maximize its value.

▵Open Offices|Open Office

Open office is currently more popular. If carefully designed, it can provide a flexible and open office environment that is convenient for communication. However, in practice, the implementation is often sloppy and simple and cheap. Just stacking the desk mechanically in a large open space has caused many problems, such as lack of privacy and security, noisy environment, and more interference. People can’t calm down and work at all, which affects efficiency and output. The survey also found that most employees do not like to work in this open office.


At present, most of the offices are just copying them and doing superficial work. They rarely plan and design carefully according to actual needs to improve employee happiness and work efficiency. Modern office needs have become more and more diverse, and a single rigid environment has been unable to meet the needs of modern office. So for us creative workers, which pattern is more appropriate? First of all, from the work and process we designed, there are mainly the following requirements:

  • When designers draw sketches, they need to be relatively quiet and less disturbing, but also to facilitate communication with colleagues;

  • During creative discussions, brainstorming, and design reviews, you need to open and promote communication in a public space;

  • When making prototypes and models to explore and verify, you need to be able to let go of the manual area, noise and dust can not affect other colleagues;

  • When you are tired, you need to have an area where you can fully relax and rest or quietly read and charge, so that the designer can quickly recover;

  • When customers come, there must be space to receive and do project presentations;

  • Design the placement and display of books and various products, and encourage everyone to read more books and observe products;

  • Interior design and furniture selection should be able to enhance the designer’s happiness and aesthetic standards, and reflect our taste.

After starting this design project, we found that how to meet so many different needs in a very limited space and budget, to be good-looking and easy to use, is really not simple at all, with many dimensions of design constraints , At the same time there are many possible solutions, it is really a nightmare to choose patients with difficult disease.

After some discussion, we decided to adopt a mixed office layout based on an open plan. We are a small team with not many people. We can easily avoid the shortcomings of open office, such as a reasonable and relaxed layout to eliminate the lack of privacy and interference, and provide enough public function space for everyone to use flexibly. /strong>When we have different needs, we can quickly switch to the appropriate scene to enter the state. However, there is a price to do so, that is, a larger area per person is required, which increases rental costs.

▵The office before renovation

The office originally had a front desk partition wall, a conference room, and a manager’s room. We discussed it and thought:

  • Our office is mainly used for our own design. There is no need to leave a front desk area, which wastes precious space for face.

  • As a small team, most discussions can be conducted directly in the work area. If privacy is needed, you can move to the lounge area or balcony. Separate meeting rooms and manager rooms are not necessary.

So we decided to tear down all these partition walls to get a complete large space. Partial partitions are made through cabinets, bookshelves, and mobile whiteboards to maximize the flexibility and utilization of the office space, keep the office spacious and transparent, and the outdoor lighting and scenery can be fully displayed, making everyone more refreshing and comfortable. On this basis, we tried many different layouts:

After some discussion, all parties weighed and selected a few layouts that we were more satisfied with to perform 3D modeling on the computer, and experience the layout effect more intuitively:

▵Sunlight angle simulation

At first, we were a little worried about the direct sunlight on the desktop window, but we did a sunlight angle simulation in Twinmotion, and found that after 10 am, the sun would basically not enter the office directly, so we were decisive. Moved the office spaces to the floor-to-ceiling windows. In this way, everyone can better enjoy the scenery outside the window and natural lighting. We can also fix the whiteboard on the wall and place a large public meeting table next to it as a place for meetings and discussions at any time.

This is the layout design we finally chose. It is mainly divided into two large areas, a working area and a rest area, separated by a transparent bookshelf. The small functional areas are scattered in these two large areas, and we will introduce them step by step below.

We try our best to save as much as possible, just simple circuit modification and color change. We don’t like to re-enact hard decoration drastically. Firstly, it is not very environmentally friendly. A lot of construction waste will be generated in the process. Secondly, the commercial space is actually not long-lived. What is suitable for us may not be suitable for the next tenant. A lot of resources are wasted in one installation. Therefore, we basically just sprayed the black ceiling white to make the room brighter and more transparent, and pave the floor.

In the selection of materials, we choose as much natural and matte texture as possible. We choose 4mm stone plastic floor to be installed directly on the original floor. The stone-plastic floor is very effective, and the installation is very simple and environmentally friendly. It can be directly snapped and spliced ​​without glue(There is no formaldehyde) span>, it is a very cost-effective choice for office space. When laying the floor, our team personally went into battle and worked all day, and found that the work efficiency and quality of the three designers were no better than a carpenter, which was embarrassing.

▵The design sketch can be discussed directly on the ground

The texture of the paved floor is good. We also chose to take off our shoes and enter the office to keep the floor clean. This not only makes the office cleaner and fresher, but also can be carried out directly on the ground when a large work space is needed, which increases the space. Experience and utilization.

The soft furnishings and furniture can be relocated to a new office in the future. Therefore, we gave a higher budget and bought a lot of imported furniture with a little customization.

The two research results are also given in the book:

  • When people have the freedom to shape their surroundings, they will increase their sense of control and self-confidence, and reduce stress

  • Red will improve people’s performance in accuracy and detailed work, but it will reduce people’s ability to free association and overall thinking.

Therefore, the entire office design is customized and selected by the team owners, and it gives everyone the freedom to choose their favorite office supplies. The entire space is also dominated by white and gray, with wood, metal, cement and green.

▵Working area

The workstation tables and public tables in the work area are all customized by the factory, because we have special requirements on size and material. We chose a large table with a length of 1.6 meters to give the designer ample space for display and distance from colleagues, which improves the sense of safety and privacy, and can work more freely. It is not as crowded and anxious as a traditional open office. .

Workplace area

We like the material’s natural texture and touch, so the tabletop uses a whole piece of white cork wood. With light gray back-shaped steel legs, in order to make the legs look more slender, we chose a triangular cross section, which is stable and light.

▵Work tables and chairs

The main computer frame we hoisted under the desktop, so that all computers and cables can be suspended on the ground, make the ground look transparent and concise, and easy to clean. Each station is also equipped with a mobile drawer cabinet with cushions, so that when colleagues come to the station temporarily to discuss, they can extract them as chairs.

The main office chair we choose is Herman Miller’s Embody. Its excellent ergonomic design can protect the lumbar spine of designers who have been sitting at the computer for a long time. It is an expensive but worthwhile investment. The desktop is also equipped with a dual-screen stand, which completely frees up valuable desktop space. At the same time, the dual screens also play a role as a partition, which can isolate some visual interference.

▵Dyson CSYS|HomePod

We designed the public meeting table as a high-leg table, so that not only a sense of height is added to the space, it also makes it easier for everyone to switch to a standing posture after sitting for a long time. The entire table top is made of oak logs with a thin layer of white paint. In addition, the size of the public table is relatively large. In order to make it look lighter visually, we also made a forty-degree bevel on the edge of the table.