The ultimate goal in creating huddle rooms is to build small spaces that encourage and empower multidisciplined teams to meet. By design these spaces are intended to facilitate productivity – without frustrating team members by adding inconveniences into the process.
Obviously, making this a reality goes well beyond simply designating small rooms or partitioning off portions of existing board rooms or meeting rooms as huddle spaces. Accomplishing the ultimate goal requires an influx of technologies capable of seamlessly providing team members everything they need to seamlessly collaborate – preferably without any or much planning.
Jet.com, for example, accomplished this when outfitting its corporate headquarters with technology solutions designed to turn its meeting spaces (including huddle rooms it calls batcaves) into fun, yet effective turnkey spaces capable of encouraging collaboration.
Let’s take a look at the type of technology that makes the most sense in these spaces:
Digital Signage
Digital signage plays a key role in alerting team members of a huddle room’s availability as well as helping avoid others disrupting an in-progress meeting. Consider, for example, a company with multiple huddle rooms it calls campsites. The digital signage may show an illuminated campfire while the room is in use.
For organizations with larger campuses, digital signage can also play the role of wayfinding for team members who may not be as familiar with an office’s layout. For example, a remote worker who is physically joining a meeting at a local campus rather than calling in from home.
Video Conferencing
Video conferencing technology is crucial when huddle room usage regularly involves the inclusion of strategic partner, remote worker or team members who operate out of other campuses or office locations.
Click here to learn more about selecting the best video conferencing solution for your organizational needs.
Interactive Whiteboard
How your organization utilizes its huddle spaces plays a key role in determining which technologies are the most important. Interactive whiteboards are a prime example of a technology that can have far more meaning to specific groups.
For instance, if one of your goals is to leverage huddle rooms as multidisciplinary spaces for collaborate brainstorming, an interactive whiteboard provides an instrumental tool for teams to capture and document thoughts. Same is true for engineering teams collaboratively sketching ideas.
Room Scheduling Technology
While huddle rooms are designed to accommodate smaller, less formal meetings, room scheduling capabilities can serve as a means of inviting crucial team members to participate in impromptu sessions.
For example, if an engineer and marketing meet up in the hallway and decide to huddle about a current development project, having access to room scheduling technology can allow them to quickly alert their peers in legal and finance to join whether in person or via web or video conferencing in order to answer crucial questions about viability.
Web conferencing
Very similar to video conferencing yet often less formal or dedicated, web conferencing leverages a solid internet connection to provide team members with instant access to audio or video communication capabilities to connect stakeholders operating in multiple locations.
Web conferencing can prove instrumental when one team member needs to share their screen for a quick presentation. The capabilities and often image quality are often far less definition, yet can meet the need for most internal meetings.
Audio Visual Furniture
The location of video walls, interactive displays, cameras, microphones and speakers are often stationary in these spaces. However, the best huddle spaces provide flexible furnishings that team members can easily rearrange depending on how many people are in the meeting or what activities attendees intend to do during their time in the huddle space.
Comfortable chairs and tables to properly hold personal technology are crucial components to effective spaces. Make sure the use of the audiovisual furnishings is plug and play so that team members can instantly turn the environment into a productive collaboration suite.
Need help properly equipping your huddle rooms? Electrosonic can help. We understand technology and how to make the most of creative applications. Click here to learn more.
