Catalyzing organizational change by embedding human-centered design thinking into staff practice across seven U.S. offices

BranchPattern, a building engineering consultancy and design firm, wanted to grow the ability for facilitating human-centered design processes across all members of the firm. The firm’s leadership was meticulous in their attention to designing for the health and comfort of building occupants, to the integrative design process, and to sustainability.  To advance the firm’s work in this regard, they needed to grow the capacity for their entire team to better facilitate human-centered design throughout design, construction, occupancy, and evaluation. IBE used an intentional and highly collaborative process with the BranchPattern leadership team to confirm their design principles, to assess barriers and to identify opportunities for growing their human-centered design process across the firm.  IBE refined and co-developed the strategy, resources, and targeted education offerings that were needed to grow the skills, confidence, and understanding for team members to use the process in projects firmwide.

Custom Education Programming I Branch Pattern

Key Outcomes

  • Understanding of barriers and incentives to staff adoption of the new initiative to inform successful implementation
  • Empowerment of a core team to serve as resources to all staff
  • Greater staff ownership of the new initiative and its implementation
    Improved ability for staff to engage client stakeholders and design for future building occupants

Project Deliverables

  • Adaptable tools to guide deeper engagement of stakeholders in projects
  • On-demand webinars orienting staff to new stakeholder engagement tools and addressing barriers to adoption
  • Ongoing coaching to support long-term organizational change