Last week, me and a gang of UC Davis Interior Architecture majors stormed to the city of San Francisco last Friday afternoon to meet up with a former UC Davis Design student named Alison, who is now employed by one top design firms in the nation, Steelcase. She was nice enough to take time out of her busy schedule to show us around her work place at Steelcase and give us a personal tour of the showcase they have there. I learned that there is way more into design than what meets the eye. For example, Steelcase does plenty of psychological research when producing new products, covering all variables that could potentially affect the quality of ones work, such as privacy levels or even color choice. While some employees value privacy more than others, Steelcase offers plenty of options when working with their clients. A lot of their working environment products are either adjustable of versatile, perfect for adapting to any type of situation to fit a companies needs. She even showed us their furniture solutions for recent studies of how people feel when one might want to have a meeting with another but does not want to talk for more than seven minutes; there are tables at Steelcase for that. Major research goes on at Steelcase which is most likely why they are such a successful company. Society views design mostly for aesthetic reasons but little do they know there are reasons for why a lot of designs are the way they are. You would have to get down under the skin to start thinking why do people feel this way, which is exactly what Steelcase have been successful with and are able to make adjustments to make incredible products for clients who look for almost anything Steelcase has to offer.
What a fun field trip!
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