Stoked recently completed the latest office for Sunlife Singapore, a Canadian financial services company.

Known for our customised architecture and designing for spaces, we sought to create an atmosphere that would reflect the company and to also increase the efficiency of their team members at the office.

We took the sundial concept as a metaphor, derived from the namesake of the company.

This was specially chosen to explore and express the time-based approach with the main communal space at the entrance representing the sundial radiating out to other functions to support the various work processes in the office.

Upon completion, the objective of the design concept was met – to mimic the shadow hand of a sundial, while a seamless spatial experience radiates from the central communal space.

We created an experience where each space in the office is designed so that it would be optimally used for certain tasks at certain times.

Now, with great changes, comes great responsibility of the change-makers to ensure the end-users are comfortable and also get on-board on the massive transformation.

With the situation of the end-user group being from different countries and different cultures, we carried out a series of change management workshops to align the functional needs in order to integrate the design process seamlessly to the change management programme.

With the idea of co-creation at the centre of our design processes, great emphasis was given to engage users in the three phases of change management – introducing change; executing change; and sustaining change.

The introducing change phase involved bringing the user through the understanding and provisioning for requirements for the transformation to take place. The What, Why, When, Who, and How of the transformation was accurately exchanged with the end-users.

Next, in the executing change phase, we involved spatial mark-ups and design feature mock-ups, and engaged to ensure the client followed through the construction processes that were involved.

In the final stage of sustaining change, we introduced them to their new workplace, furniture and fixtures, and the usages of the different spaces aligned to the end-user to ensure they know how to actually use the spaces specially designed for them.

Finally, our feedback session went smoothly with the selected end-users who had a first-hand experience on the whole new environment and practices.

Their feedback was vital for every stage of transformation as we needed to gauge their responses and see if the changes contributed greatly to their daily tasks and achieved the objective that was set during the initial discussions.

This also becomes the basic benchmarking to gather constructive feedback and make adjustments when the spaces are experimented by the end-user.

We’re glad as our firm mission  was accomplished with the expected end results and the sundial concept was well received by the people of Sunlife Singapore.