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Logan Vantrease
A building should suit the activity that takes place there. Architecture and design can enhance productivity, balance, and communication. After all, buildings should be easy to move around in.
Without new value-adding design innovations, we’d be stuck with the same huts we lived in centuries ago. It’s certainly not news that well-designed schools create better learning environments and workplaces with intentional architecture experience higher productivity.
Why is this true? Well – architecture shapes the way we live. It shapes how we interact with our co-workers. It directs our means to create, produce, and work.
The butcher shop needs a different layout than your local accounting firm. The architecture of a gym should be wildly different from the floorplan of our homes. A medical biotech office should have a different arrangement than a cloud computing company.
To pull a quote from The Fountainhead, “No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determines the shape.”
We believe that digital architecture is no different. The way that we organize our digital interfaces can drastically change our experiences. Some websites are sleek, minimalist, and intuitive to navigate.
Others are dense with visuals, information, and eye-catching material.
But each serves a different, specific purpose. We can change the layout, focus, or organization of our websites, software, and internal communication tools to shape the way we live. Websites can shape how we interact with potential clients. Duh.
But less often considered – the architecture of internal communication tools shape our means to create, produce, and work together. In many respects, Slack represents our online office.
Slack intentionally keeps their number of built-in features to a minimum for good reason – freedom to customize.
A medical biotech company should have a different digital arrangement than a cloud computing company. The virologists, epidemiologists, and pathologists who work at various research institutions are running on Slack. They will certainly need different tools than an insurance company would need to tailor their internal communication.
Each organization is free to shape and customize their Slack channels in any way they see fit. As no two companies look the same, these organizations are adding the tools that work for them. These customizations shape the way your team interacts with one another. These bots set the stage for their productivity. This is architecture.
If you’re using Slack without adding a single bot, integration, or app to help tailor your team’s digital communication experience – it’s time to rethink your decisions. You might still be living in a hut.
Create a digital architecture that’s easy to move around in. You’ll be more comfortable – and might even sleep better at night.
