“Design helps”, a spe­cial COVID pro­gram for the cor­po­rate sector

COVID-19 has changed the world. Many com­pa­nies have rec­og­nized the need to over­haul their prod­ucts and ser­vices, their dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels, and their com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties to adapt to the new real­i­ty. The sit­u­a­tion calls for new solu­tions – fast.
Joint­ly with renowned part­ners, bay­ern design has cre­at­ed a pro­gram of dig­i­tal events to help SMEs bet­ter weath­er the coro­n­avirus crisis.
Var­i­ous dig­i­tal for­mats were used to present best prac­tice exam­ples for prod­uct design and to illus­trate the impuls­es, solu­tions, strate­gies, and tools the design indus­try has to offer.
The spe­cial Design helps pro­gram cov­ers a broad range of top­ics includ­ing recon­fig­ur­ing work­spaces and busi­ness premis­es to meet dis­tanc­ing and hygiene reg­u­la­tions, imple­ment­ing the design-based dig­i­ti­za­tion of offer­ings and ser­vices, and devel­op­ing new prod­ucts and ideas for the market.

Since the begin­ning of the coro­na pan­dem­ic, com­pa­nies have been faced with the chal­lenge of intro­duc­ing new hygiene and safe­ty stan­dards in their work and office spaces with­in a short peri­od of time. At the same time, these mea­sures should also be suit­able in the long term to reduce the risk of infec­tion. How can access restric­tions be sen­si­bly imple­ment­ed and cus­tomer flows be ele­gant­ly man­aged? What can the office, shop, restau­rant of the future look like? What ideas are there for the good design of col­lab­o­ra­tion at a distance?

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has changed our work envi­ron­ments sub­stan­tial­ly. Com­pa­nies have faced the chal­lenge of imple­ment­ing dis­tanc­ing and hygiene stan­dards in their work­spaces and busi­ness premis­es in a short peri­od of time.

In addi­tion, many busi­ness­es have made more exten­sive use of home offices, flex­i­ble work­spaces, dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and oth­er new forms of work­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing. These mea­sures will con­tin­ue to play an impor­tant role in work envi­ron­ments, as will oth­er trends.

The design of offices and work­spaces has played a cru­cial role in the short- and long-term imple­men­ta­tion of the above-not­ed mea­sures to sup­port and fos­ter employ­ees’ per­for­mance and health as well as the abil­i­ty of com­pa­nies to adapt to the new reality.

The top­ic was dis­cussed at a bay­ern design forum. Speech­es were giv­en by

• Michael Held, Design Direc­tor of Steelcase’s Learn­ing Cen­ter in Munich
• Cari­na Müller, Mem­ber of the Work­space Inno­va­tion Research Team at Fraun­hofer-Insti­tut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organ­i­sa­tion (IAO) in Stuttgart
• Dr. Oliv­er Her­wig mod­er­at­ed the discussion.

The event took place via zoom on June 16, 2020. Watch the doc­u­men­ta­tion in German:

Sina Trinkwalder of Urban­doo GmbH report­ed on the devel­op­ment of a gar­ment that fea­tures inte­grat­ed res­pi­ra­to­ry pro­tec­tion. Ten years ago, Trinkwalder found­ed Manoma­ma GmbH, the first social busi­ness in the tex­tile indus­try. Dur­ing the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, the Augs­burg-based entre­pre­neur reworked the designs of her prod­ucts. She shared her expe­ri­ences with mod­er­a­tor and brand expert Maren Martschenko at the bay­ern design talk. Watch the video in German.

With­in a few weeks, a small inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team man­aged to man­u­fac­ture face shields using pro­duc­tion equip­ment nor­mal­ly employed for mak­ing binders and fold­ers. The shields pro­vide pro­tec­tion against air­borne infec­tion and are viable as alter­na­tives to the clas­sic mouth-nose mask, for exam­ple, for asth­ma patients. Jonathan Brune, Head of Cor­po­rate Devel­op­ment at LUC­TRA, DURABLE Hun­ke & Jochheim GmbH & Co. KG., gave an account of how his com­pa­ny devel­oped the face shields. Watch the video in German.

The two hygiene prod­ucts Hacxs and Hand­ixx also were devel­oped with­in a short span of time. Ralf Deuke, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Cre­abis GmbH, report­ed on the design and devel­op­ment of the hook and the han­dle that help pre­vent smear infec­tion. Cre­abis GmbH used its addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing machines to cre­ate these prod­ucts in a mat­ter of days. The design of the prod­ucts has helped to opti­mize the addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing process and to low­er pro­duc­tion costs sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Hacxs and Hand­ixx were the company’s first for­ay into the B2C seg­ment. Watch the video in German.

What can the hos­pi­tal of the future look like? And how does an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team of archi­tects, inte­ri­or design­ers, design­ers and med­ical experts work togeth­er to design it? Mag­nus Nickl, CEO of Nickl & Part­ner Archi­tects, reports how his office devel­oped a sym­bol­ic pro­pos­al for a hos­pi­tal on There­sien­wiese to meet the needs of the Covid-19 pandemic.