The psychology of color. Designing Spaces for Creative Collaboration - HBR IdeaCast. An interview with Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft, co-directors of the Environments Collaborative at the Stanford University d.school and authors of Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration. Download this podcast KATHERINE BELL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Katherine Bell. I’m on the phone today with Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft. SCOTT DOORLEY: Thank, Katherine. SCOTT WITTHOFT: Thanks Katherine, our pleasure. KATHERINE BELL: So what makes a space good for collaborative and creative work? SCOTT WITTHOFT: It’s important to bring your full self to work, and a creative environment is an environment that helps you bring your full self to work. Another aspect of creative work is idea generation. We think it’s very important to lower status in the creative space. KATHERINE BELL: So can you give us some concrete examples of how an organization might choose to design space differently to be able to encourage the kind of behaviors you’re talking about?
SCOTT DOORLEY: Yes. Training room design. Classroom design. A learning environment’s ideal state. I’ve been creating some documentation on learning environment design for a workshop I’m doing in a couple of weeks at Learning 2011. Today, I was noodling over the criteria for a rich learning environment. Whether you are designing an environment for other learners, or paying attention to enriching your own learning environment, here are some test points to determine if it’s a thing of beauty. In my framework, a learning environment is an aggregation of various learning components that is designed to support learners in self-provisioning materials, gaining access to people, and engaging in activities that are needed in order to learn in a specific arena. Features of a rich learning environment > To support high-impact learning outcomes, a rich learning environment promotes motivation to learn, contains high quality learning resources, and provides opportunity for application and feedback.
That first item – promoting motivation to learn – is the trickiest to achieve, I think. On the mark? Designing a 21st Century Learning Environment.