Aalborg University in Copenhagen was looking to diversify the offer of its spaces through a close collaboration with the personnel working in the offices, library and canteen. The team focused particularly on the office secretaries as main users in order to create a product that could suit their needs.

At the time of the project, in the main administrative office was occurring a radical change in the organisation of the space. Indeed, the current office, which was occupied at the time by three Study Secretaries and four Project Secretaries, it should have host three new Study Secretaries who were they were used to have their individual office until then.

The Study Secretaries have been engaged in a co-design process to jointly share knowledge, opinions and evaluate potential solutions. Ethnographic studies, such as observations and qualitative interviews, gave the team insights about the habits and practices performed in the space of the office. In this way it was possible to identify visible problems with the existing design of the office and how the context affects the administration’s work. Particular focus have been given on the physical work-space, both collective and individual, the sequences of the tasks, the tools used and how people work together. Personas were created based on the data collected in order to represent the people who were interacting with the office: Students, professors, cleaning staff etc. A design game was created to identify the most relevant issue to focus the project on and to create a common understanding regarding the problematic elements of the office.

The team created a design game, which enabled the internal communication about issues and support the resolution of them in order to perform their work in the best conditions. The game is characterised by three phases: association, individual prioritisation and collective prioritisation that were connected with five major issues: Storage, space for concentration, decoration and aesthetics, social interaction, coordination and planning.