I’m proud of both the process and the outcome for Sasaki’s guide to our new Boston office at 110 Chauncy Street. This post describes the thinking behind the project. To see it in action, visit my project page, or check out Issue #1: Why?, Issue #2: In a Nutshell, Issue #3: New Neighborhood, Issue #4: Where Is My Sh*t, and Issue #5: Hybrid New World.
The Brief
In fall 2021, one month after I started at Sasaki, I was tasked with helping to prepare our 300 Boston-area employees (then all working remotely) for the return to office in a new space. This was a sensitive topic for many long-standing employees because not only was Sasaki selling their historic Watertown office (the company’s home for over 50 years) in favor of a building in downtown Boston, but the new studio design would introduce unassigned seating to make room for new amenities. That transition would necessitate a shift in mindset, asking employees to limit office possessions and let go of some familiar routines. Our guide to the new office, called He110 Chauncy, aimed to distribute logistical information, anticipate and assuage concerns, share our designers’ vision for the space, prime people for regular interaction again, reconnect employees, and drum up excitement.
Approach
When leadership asked us to produce this resource, it was initially envisioned as a simple branded pdf. However I persuaded them that the right delivery vehicle would be more interactive, playful, and casual. For a topic as sensitive and significant to firm culture as the move, we leaned into visual interest with illustrations and only oblique references to our branding, to make it feel as personal and engaging as possible. And since the operations team (dealing with post-pandemic supply chain backups) was still figuring out office logistics in real-time, we needed a medium that would let us trickle out information gradually over several months. And so, after a few round-table conversations and proof-of-concept mockups, we decided to create an internal-facing, interactive newsletter, which would live on a site built by our team of data designers. That format let us break material into manageable chunks, starting with the overall concept and narrowing over time to focus on different slivers of logistics. It also allowed us to modify anything on the website in real-time so there wouldn’t be out of date information circulating.
Team / Process
I project-managed, edited, illustrated, and gave art direction on the five newsletters of the welcome guide between November 2021 and July 2022, as well as a subsequent office guide website. I worked closely with our in-house data designers, the interior design team that oversaw the office redesign, as well as the heads of our various operations teams (HR, technology, culture) who were figuring out office logistics and new policies. I was the main point of contact between each of these groups for He110 Chauncy, and met with each group of contributors weekly to make sure we were on track and the content reflected the most up-to-date info. As a group we decided what the topics of each newsletter would be. And together we identified key people in the firm who could help rally support from a larger group, and encouraged them to write op-eds and share their perspectives. Since the project was internal-facing, we didn’t have a budget. And so rather than bring on a freelance illustrator, I spent my evenings imagining and drawing light, loopy figures to bring levity to the project and complement the site’s bouncy user experience.
Outcome
The production of He110 Chauncy demanded coordination of many actors across an ever-shifting timeline. I coaxed leadership, junior staff, and the operations team to write about their visions for the new office and think through logistics that had previously stayed in the realm of the abstract. Ultimately though we were able to deliver delightful, informative experience to our employees’ inboxes on our original schedule.
The end result was a helpful artifact, dense yet legible. I heard an outpouring of support around the welcome guide the whole time we were producing it, and I believe it helped to cultivate some good will and relieve anxiety around the move. The project was so successful that the BSA asked me to present the project to comms/marketing professionals as part of a series on internal communications in the design industry.