Camp ChIDEO: Temporary Summer Studio

In the summer of 2019, IDEO Chicago underwent a $7M renovation of our 20,000 sq. ft. West Loop studio (see Project Atlas project page for more details). To make room for construction and ensure business continuity, our renovation team needed to move 90+ of us to a temporary office for four months.

Luckily, we still held the lease on the former office space of the data science company we acquired a few years earlier. That saved us additional rent. Unfortunately, their old offices across town were incredibly bland and much, much smaller — 7,000 sq. ft. — with almost no amenities. The transition was going to be rough for our designers who were used to a fully stocked kitchen, a Shop chock full of tools, spacious project spaces, and private bathrooms. We had to manage expectations carefully. I was in charge of the creative direction of our temp space and our communications strategy.

I pulled out my dog-eared copy of William Bridge's classic change management book, "Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change," and got to work.

Bridges' well-known framework, the "Transition Model," highlights the three stages people go through during times of change:

+ ENDINGS: Transition starts with an ending. This first phase begins when people identify what they are losing and learn how to manage these losses.

+ NEUTRAL ZONE: People go through an in-between time when the old is gone but the new isn’t fully operational. It's the core of the transition process, a time between the old reality and sense of identity and the new one.

+ NEW BEGINNINGS: Beginnings involve new understandings, values, and attitudes. Beginnings are marked by a release of energy in a new direction and are an expression of a fresh identity. As a result, they feel reoriented and renewed.

People go through each stage at their own pace. As a workplace experience designer, my job — and that of my team — was to help shepherd our community through these transitions — from old to temp to new studio — with ease and minimal disruptions.

I knew we would have to set expectations of a “Minimum Viable Studio”: there would be a minimal kitchen, a minimal Shop, hot-desk-only seating, and movable project rooms. Since our temporary office would be operating over the summer, I pitched anchoring on the metaphor of camp: a fun escape from normal work life. Thus, Camp ChIDEO was born. Our tagline? "Only the Strong Survive."

ENDINGS
-----
We started storytelling about Camp ChIDEO at our Annual Studio Awards in January. Theme: “Into the Woods." Dress code: Midwestern camping chic.

To prepare everyone mentally for the change, we doubled down on multi-channel communications in the months before the move. We created posters, held Community Conversations, gave regular updates at our Monday all-hands, created special Slack channels, held co-design meetings with the community, and wrote FAQs.

To save ourselves from storing stuff we no longer needed, we threw weekly community "Estate Sales" and offered the services of "Decluttering Doulas" — expert organizers in our studio — who helped co-workers get rid of things that no longer "sparked joy." We said goodbye to our old studio by donning white Tyvek jumpsuits while chanting, dancing, and splatter-painting our now-empty kitchen floor together.

THE NEUTRAL ZONE
-----
When "Campers" showed up on the first day of Camp, the formerly blah Datascope offices had been transformed with bright green astroturf, a picnic table, picnic blankets, twinkle lights, and vintage camping gear. Campers were given Camp swag including merit badges, totes, water bottles, and key rings before being given tours of the "Campground" by "Camp Counselors" (our Workplace Experience and IT teams). One hour after Camp opened, all our designers were back to work and settling into their new routines. Whew!

For the first two months, people leaned into Camp life. They decorated their project spaces, enjoyed picnics in Millennium Park, and took advantage of the wonder that is summer in Chicago. But we knew the honeymoon wouldn’t last. We needed to start some new rituals to diffuse the inevitable tensions of too many people, too few resources, in too little space.

We solicited feedback from the community via weekly "Camp Council Meetings" and #campcouncil Slack channel. As a Workplace Experience team, we committed to fixing Camp annoyances in record time or providing timely explanations on why we couldn't. Halfway through Camp, our comms started to focus on construction progress and all the great things we'd be able to do when we got back home.

NEW BEGINNINGS
-----
Finally, on November 4, we packed up Camp and opened the doors to our renovated studio! Since our studio was located in Greektown, we threw a tasteful toga party complete with a harpist to greet us in the vestibule. Our Project Atlas team felt like a huge weight had been lifted.

Little did we know, just five months later, in March 2020, we'd be vacating our beautiful new space, scattering to our homes and Zoom because of COVID.

As the pandemic stretched into months, then years, those who had "survived" Camp ChIDEO became wistfully nostalgic about the experience. On the "Fun Scale," it seems Camp ChIDEO ranked as "Type II: only fun in retrospect, you'd do it again."

In 2022, when we were able to safely return to in-person work again, we transformed one of our conference rooms into a mini Camp ChIDEO at the community's request. It soon became a tour stop to talk about the power of human-centered workplace experience design — an exemplar of creatively co-designing a change management strategy where people go "into the woods" as individuals and come back out bonded as a group.