Project Haelo
Haelo Work Experience...
A bit about the company Haelo…
'Haelo company mission is to influence the delivery of public services and become a strong agent for change by adding to the growing knowledge of how improvement works in theory and practice.'
We had a great chance to work with company Haelo, located in Media City. It was an opportunity I did not want to miss out. Main aim of the work experience was to redesign the space coming up with concepts and ideas to improve the working environment.
Haelo’s office had several interesting aspects as it was spacious consisting of huge windows. However, the office space was lacking proper design; the open was space empty, was in need of a reception desk and they did not know a good way too section off and utilise the space for the right purposes while making it look visually appealing. For this reason, we were asked to help design the space and come up with solutions for certain special issues.
The design requirements were:
New reception area
Accommodation for up to 70no. persons seated auditorium
Stage area
Screen for projection and presentation
Partitions to subdivide space for working area
Furniture selection for 70no. (stackable)
12no. round tables 1200mm dia
Storage space
Area for meetings, visiting consultants to work ‘innovation space’
Large blackboard or cork wall to promote ideas
The Haelo workforce wanted a space to host events and develop it into an innovation area where everyone could gather without interruptions.
The main challenge with this work experience was for us to address all the issues they want us to resolve, but keeping in mind of the existing space with large section pillars to work around.
The pictures below are taken at Haelo, on our first visit to evaluate space on the 9th December 2016
Decided to print out the plan and start adding partitions and dividing the space in the most convenient and suitable way to work with the office space.
So here we go.. First we started to research into working space designs to get some ideas
We then decided to start off with the presentation by listing down the requirements and what should we do next.
Below is an image showing some concept ideas and inspiration. These ideas are great for open working space and are modern. We decided to keep the colour theme flowing through to keep it elegant yet eye catching as it was also requested by the clients to use the colours that are familiar for the company to represent them.
This is an Autocad drawing of our initial plan to be pitched to the Haelo team.
The next step was to look into furniture and reception area that are affordable and contemporary.
The other main required element was to divide the space with partitions. We made sure we gave them a few styles to choose from which might be most suitable for the team such as glass and acoustic partitions.
I decided to come up with a mood board to give a visual guide and a clear vision of where to start as it’s much easier to jump right in to the visual prototyping process than working on a blank canvas.
Today 10th February 2017, it was time to present the final ideas to the members of the staff. Me and my partner came up with an affordable and realistic concepts to help develop the space. Our main aim was to create an appealing and functional working environment. through sectioning off areas using partitions. We realised this would create more privacy and utilize the space to its full potential, however keeping in mind the materials and items we pitch are affordable to the available budget.
It was quiet hard to managing university work, part time job and this project. However, working with Haelo has been a great experience. It has helped me learn to deal with clients design requirements and needs. Another great part of this work experience was that it taught me how to pitch my design ideas in a professional manner that a person understand not from a interior designers view but a clients view, as it is important to make sure you give the best presentation for clients to understand your design proposals. The project was fun to work on, as it was not really complicated which I felt really gave us the chance to be more creative with our concepts.
The feedback we got from the Haelo team was great and it was satisfying to see how pleased they were with the ideas and was looking forward to going ahead to work on our designs. It is exciting to see how it will look all done, hopefully we get to see the before and after to compare, Which I love to do to see the difference we get too make as interior designers.
