Designed with Care

About

Designed with Care is about creating usable spaces for people that use them. Simple.

My philosophy is Design for people. Care for people.

I work with architects and designers to ensure spaces are designed based on human factors; so they work for people. This benefits the designer, employees, and the business.

Compliance does not always equal a user friendly design.

Compliance is often the most important priority for anyone, however this may not be enough to make a workplace user friendly and ultimately safe and healthy. Other benefits include:

Increased productivity

Less sick leave

Cost effectiveness

Less incidents and injuries

Logical workflows

Low staff turn over

Optimal staff comfort and

An environment customised to the work

This kind of workplace fosters a healthy and productive business.

Each space must be designed to consider the end users, the equipment, and the tasks being performed in those spaces. In terms of OH&S, this is a legislative requirement, but how well is this usually done? Legislation is often general to cover a wide range of outcomes, which allows designs to be different, new, and innovative, which is wonderful. However, the approach to only meet general legislation can be troublesome, because it does not force us to consider the human factors to the extent that they deserve.

Too often, a building design is signed off based on its compliance with building codes, and minimum Australian Standards requirements, however these requirements are not always the best for ALL situations.

If you want a building to suit the tasks being performed in it, you should be making sure your building is designed to take into account the usability, not just compliance.

Make sure you consult a human factors specialist when designing, and you can maximise on best practice design.

If you already have a workplace, you should make sure that it is user friendly, safe, and healthy for your staff.

Make sure you have workspaces and tasks assessed to achieve best practice and OH&S compliance.

Designed with Care can provide the services you need to create safe and healthy work environments, increase productivity, save money, and care for staff.