Great meeting rooms don’t just happen by accident. They’re well thought over to make people feel comfortable, foster creativity, and are inclusionary of the newest office tech on the market. They also welcome and expect change, adapting around the trends to move forward with the times.
The keys to your meeting room
Creating a meeting room depends on what you do and what you want to do and the first question you need to ask is: “What requirements will the meeting room need to fulfil? What will its main functions be?” This will depend on your company. The purpose of the meeting room will then decide its layout and size.
Smaller meeting rooms will be reserved for individual work, shorter syncs or working in smaller teams. Bigger conference rooms, however, need to be designed in such a way to cater to various meeting needs. Otherwise, that huge conference hall will only take up space as your employees will continue to pass it by every single day.
The first question you need to ask yourself is: “What will the meeting room’s main functions be?” This will influence every other decision you make.
Sticking to the basics
Ensuring people are comfortable and diverse needs are met on a daily basis is one of the keys of a good meeting room. Breaking up the setup of a large conference room into a few sets is one way of achieving this but it might not be applicable for every meeting room.
There are a few basics to get down first when designing a meeting room like how many people it should host and how big it should be. Allow for enough space for people to stand up comfortably without spilling coffee, bumping into their coworkers and generally making everybody hate them.
Moving around the table without having to first slide all of your coworkers closer to the table is also a good move. (Side note: don’t ever slide them, let them slide themselves.) Reserving 25 to 30 sq. ft. per person should be a sufficient rule of thumb to do some stretching around the table. For the most meticulous, there are very concrete spacing guidelines you can follow.
Your meeting room’s identity
The meeting room should ideally achieve the right balance between formal and creative. Infusing the design with your company’s culture tops it off and gives it identity. And there are many things you can do to make a room come alive — from artwork, funky furniture or decorations to simply giving the room a unique name.
Room booking solutions
Digital door labels are another way to add some flair to your meeting room. They can be attached to any surface, so that glass panel will stay in tact, and display basic meeting room information. You can have some fun naming them and customizing them to your taste.
The best booking systems connect with existing calendars, allow scheduling remotely or on the spot and offer an intuitive, localized interface that only necessitates a few clicks to do the job. They pull up meeting room schedules at the conference room door, which eliminates room conflict, saves time and boosts productivity because the task of scheduling is optimized. Modern digital door labels can be set up to free meeting rooms automatically if no one checks in, offering up meeting rooms deemed taken before.
Ensuring people are comfortable and diverse needs are met on a daily basis is one of the keys of a good meeting room.
Can you see me? Can you hear me?
There are a few basic keys for a good meeting room or to put it differently, a few keys how not to design a meeting room your staff will avoid because essentially it sucks.
Lighting can be tricky when designing meeting rooms, since you need to take into consideration not only artificial but also natural light which might interfere with presentations and the screens in the meeting room. Installing blinds is therefore a necessity to guarantee good screen visibility. Also, offering a couple of lighting variations to switch on and off helps you find the best option for a particular meeting. If it’s a smaller sync meeting, you don’t really need to light up the whole meeting room since you’re huddled up in one part of the room. Lighting sets the scene and contributes to the feel of the meeting, plus it affects the mood and productivity of your employees.
The larger the meeting room, the more the sound bounces off walls and interferes with audio quality. Putting in sound-absorbing materials on the ceiling, walls or floors eliminates this and makes for a pleasant meeting without this sort of hindrance, which can be particularly trying for people with hearing difficulties.
A meeting room for techno joy
The fear everyone has is that technology will leave them high and dry in their time of presentation. Implementing technology that’s user-friendly and introducing automation, so that multiple devices react at the touch of a single button, is a wise move. The screen is lowered, the projector fires up and the blinds close — this saves time, money, and it’ll save your employees some nerves, which you can stretch on another occasion (maybe at that big board meeting coming up next week).
Hiding away the tech and cabling so it isn’t in plain sight and opting for wireless devices in the first place helps to keep the meeting room pleasant to the eye. Nobody wants to trip over cables and stare at them the whole day.
A multimedia cabinet with all the necessary plugs, chargers, extensions and a few usb hubs is a must.
Audio/visual equipment and where it will be located is a big consideration when designing a meeting room as are sufficient data ports and power strips, preferably built into the table, so people can comfortably connect their electronic devices without climbing under it.
A multimedia cabinet with all the necessary plugs, chargers and a few extensions is always a good idea. When your phone runs out of juice at the meeting, you can plug it in elegantly and not obsess over the fact that you left your charger at home. And it bodes well to consider the trusty staples like old-school whiteboards and their interactive cousins which upload notes to the cloud as you go, printers, storage cabinets and a small fridge for drinks and snacks. Everything in the meeting room should look like it belongs there and wasn’t just slapped in afterwards.
Choosing a TV
Having a conference room computer or TV for the purposes of presentations is a good decision, since it eliminates having to plug up laptops and other devices every single time. This way you won’t be losing time running into plug-and-play technical difficulties, which eat away at least 10 minutes at the minimum when they happen. And they happen.
To select the right TV however there are a couple of things to think over in addition to how big your screen needs to be, like ensuring everyone in the meeting room has an unobstructed view of the TV, so people won’t constantly have to lean back and forth to see the screen. If the meeting room is particularly large, you might even decide for two TVs, one at each end so the people at the meeting can really kick back and enjoy.
Taking into account the software your company uses will also influence your decision. The short story: Apple TV will satisfy the Apple enthusiasts and Chromecast will be the go-to for Google and Android fans.
Everything in the meeting room should look like it belongs there and to that particular company.
Reflecting company culture
Tailoring the meeting room so it reflects your company’s vibe is part of how you want to present your brand and it’s something that everyone who steps into your office notices right away. Devoting some time to make your meeting room great, comfortable and a little quirky will affect your staff and make them more motivated. Spending time in a room that makes you feel good hasn’t hurt anyone before. Especially if you need to survive all those meetings …
Creating a meeting room depends on what you do and what you want to do.
Photo credit: A. Domitrica
