Understanding the users was part of my job, I just did not see it.
I started out as a graduate consultant in my current firm (Arup) and as I’m writing this post, it has been five years of working with some of the most brilliant designers and engineers that constantly innovates and strives to shape a better world.
I am by no means an engineer. I majored in Geography for my Bachelors degree and focused mainly on urban and political geography. (Yes, Geography is more than just studying landforms and knowing what the capital cities are but this is a story reserved for another day). This made me the only team member with a non-engineering background and I initially tried to fit in but realised that instead of trying to fit in, I could rely and capitalised on my strengths.
My strengths were only more prominent over time as I was given the task of managing projects and colleagues that were from different disciplines and seniority. Being able to visualise projects from a holistic perspective and to listen to the viewpoints of the various disciplines that are working on the same project allowed us to be flexible and adaptive to the challenges that we faced in our projects. Understanding the clients’ requirements and needs were critical in our design stages and learning to negotiate and compromise with the internal and external stakeholders were skills that I had acquired along the way.
Over the years, I have been given the opportunity to work on a variety of projects — one moment I would be working with New York-based architects designing the Singapore’s largest passenger terminal building at Changi Airport, the next moment I would be collaborating with the Melbourne and London teams in sharing our research and analysing data on past incidents on rail transportations in cities.
Sometimes, I would find myself on site visits in places that I have always wondered what it would be like to be able to enter — one of which are the headquarters of various government ministries and military bases. I have also found myself entering bunkers or driving through multiple checkpoints to access secured sites.
It was not too long into several projects that I soon realised we were putting ourselves in the position of the users that would be accessing these spaces on a daily basis even though we were designing from a rather specialised field — risk and security.
At the onset of each project, we will organise a workshop with the stakeholders to understand their operations, business continuity plans and the critical assets that they intent to protect. Then as the masterplan starts to become more concrete, we continue to have multiple working sessions with the stakeholders to plan how they want users to navigate the spaces — for example, in the context of an airport terminal, we have to be mindful of the number of security screening lanes and ensure that passengers spend minimal amount of time here. We also have to consider the different types of users and the areas that they can or cannot access (e.g., Landside versus Airside) and design the access routes/spaces accordingly. Of course, we have to justify our design requirements with the other disciplines e.g., Architecture, Lighting as it could have implications on their designs too. Several iterations of the masterplan would be developed before we land on one where all stakeholders agree and sign off on the final design.
So the next time you walk through immigration at airports, remember that there are people like myself that helped to design these spaces. They may not be the most enjoyable aspect, but they are indeed necessary.
