So far analyzing the PRL turned out to be the toughest challenge for me thus far. I have prior experience working in the environment so I thought it would be an interesting space to design.

I did learn a great deal through the process of designing the space. I started by going and taking photos of the area and it was interesting that when I did, the entire space had been cleared out for some sort of event. Usually the majority of the highbay was split into different sections for specific uses. This made the space very open and gave me the opportunity to really turn it into anything that I wanted to. I also learned that a big space needs design that fits in the environment properly. The scale truly matters and something mis-sized would fall under the category of poor design.

In regards to planning I believe that I did a really great job. I did my best to take note of what was already in the space, how a user would use the available area (and in this case I used my past experiences from how I actually used the highbay), problems that I experienced along the way, any online experiences that previously existed, and finally proposed solutions to better optimize the available space and resources. Having all this down on paper allowed me to more easily evaluate what I could actually do to the space to make a difference as opposed to just reorganizing the furniture and adding some useless new smart gadgets.

This project was definitely one that had me stumped much of the time. I had trouble deciding exactly how deep to go and what people who actually use the highbay would think of what I was designing. Since the space is meant to be communal and shared by everyone associated with projects situated there, I wasn’t sure how they would react to screens on the walls or a formal sign in system. I also felt disappointed that I didn’t go deep enough after the second critique because I realized how much further I could have taken this design.

I feel that I did really well in the category of analyzing the problem and how I could solve the problem properly for the space. Where I definitely could have improved would have been in my creativity in solving the issues I found with the environment. I could have added a more stylistic solution and something that would have “wow’d” whoever entered the space. I sort of lost that aspect in trying to create a functional solution.