Participatory Design 

WHR’s participatory design process engages building owners, principle users, management, facility operators, engineers, technologists, builders and more to fully explore a building’s purpose and design inside and out. This process requires good listening skills, consensus building and an ability to achieve balance. We use a variety of techniques that help us better understand the design task we have undertaken and the range of issues we must consider.

Visioning – We have developed and perfected visioning techniques that help us better understand,  articulate and document the larger goals of our clients.

Goal Setting – Every project we encounter has competing goals. We strive to help our clients establish a set of prioritized balanced goals that can become the basis for measuring our proposed design solutions.

Design Dialogue – Each client has a unique language describing what they want. We routinely employ a participatory process that allows us to create a common illustrated vocabulary that greatly enhances communication throughout the design process.

Programming – Our programming process challenges preconceptions, benchmarks current practices, tests assumptions and, aligns expectations with an appropriate budget for every project.

Simulation and Mock-Ups – Using the latest software, we create full-scale mock-ups of critical areas in projects to ensure that those who will use the facility can better understand what their project will look like. This process often results in substantive comments from the users and helps refine the design.

All of the aforementioned techniques support our efforts to engage our clients in the design process, enhance communication, and improve the quality of our projects’ designs.