Leading with Interactive Starts at Home (or Work)

Like good manners and learning to read, it has been said that positive behaviors start in the home. At Pop Art, where our mantra is Lead with Interactive™, this principle holds true. The way we approach online interactive begins in our offline work space.

The 3rd floor of Pop Art is an open floor plan model, completely cubicle-free and having few enclosed spaces. In areas where walls do exist (two offices, a conference room, and a break room, for example), those walls are glass panels, affording complete visibility into the room. Work stations are mostly wide desks, some positioned front-to-front, with employees facing each other while they’re working. The close proximity of co-workers and a lack of physical inner-barriers create an environment ripe for conversation, collaboration, and idea generation – keys to Pop Art’s success in creating online interactive masterpieces.

in•ter•ac•tive: Moving from transaction-based efforts to conversations

At Pop Art, our dedication to interactive centers on opening dialog between our clients and their stakeholders. In order to create innovative online customer conversations for our clients, it is critical that we are engaging in our own thought-producing and problem-solving conversations offline. The open floor plan at Pop Art fosters this unscripted collaboration that often becomes the foundation of our best ideas and helps us deliver a more cohesive experience.

When our designers and developers are sharing their individual realms of knowledge with each other in a water-cooler brainstorm, we can quickly flesh out creative concepts, identify problems, and eliminate integration issues early in the web development process.

“Work environments that are more open create more opportunities for observing and learning from those with more experience and different skills.”

— from “Offices that Work” by Franklin Becker PhD and William Sims PhD: Cornell University: International Workplace Studies Program

Being able to eavesdrop on inter-departmental conversations also allows other team members to glean useful knowledge and insight, seemingly by audio osmosis. Tidbits of information, that might normally have been outside a typical area of expertise, aid employee learning and understanding that can be applied to current and future projects. Because Pop Art’s open floor plan spawns productive conversation in our offline space, we are then better able to create meaningful conversations and smoothly implement solutions for our clients in the online space.

Cubeless-ness = Client benefit-ness

In addition to fostering internal interactivity and light-bulb-moment-inducing talk, open office environments have also been shown to improve morale and increase productivity.

What is immediately noticeable when walking into Pop Art’s work area is the abundance of natural light, coming from large windows lining the perimeter. The open floor plan lets all employees enjoy the daylight and a stimulating city view, enhancing creativity and employee well-being. Compare this to the stereotypical, creativity-reducing cube farm environment cast in the glow of uninspiring florescent light:

Another benefit of Pop Art’s open space is that we can move efficiently and agilely when engaged in a project. Direct lines of sight to all levels of the organization allow Pop Artists to communicate efficiently and achieve results sooner with fewer hierarchical (and “cubic-al”) road blocks. Response and feedback time is reduced, saving our clients time and money.

Because we are truly interactive in our everyday work environment, the work we produce is inherently more collaborative, yielding robust concepts and strategies for our clients. By walking the walk and, more importantly, talking the talk at work, we naturally produce better interactive results for our clients!

Cube Farm photo credit: dfb