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In today’s world, people spend more time staring at a screen than their physical surroundings. In 2018, a Pew Research Center poll showed that around 77% of Americans go online daily. Eyeballs on screens have only gone up since the pandemic started, and it’s not just social media scrolling. During the pandemic, around 44% of the American workforce worked from home five days a week, up from 17% before the pandemic. Other Pew Research suggests people want to keep it that way afterward.

There is a pressing need for high-quality digital experiences as our minds are increasingly focused more on digital space than physical space. Architects and their teams are masters at curating the human experience of our physical surroundings, while Product Owners curate our digital environments with their teams. As the demand for meaningful digital experience increases, who qualifies to determine what our digital experiences should be?

You may not think it at first, but Architects make great Product Owners. They know how to solve complex problems by clearly identifying user-specific values, giving form to ephemeral ideas, and communicating the user value to a multidisciplinary team.

• Architects possess the core skills to discover what matters to users and stakeholders while balancing keen business decisions.

• They translate ideas into physical form through design thinking, empathy, and various technologies, skilling up quickly for technical execution.

• Possibly the most transferable skill is as a coordinator of various industry teams, including engineers, developers, and consultants.

Both roles share very common affinities in how they think, approach, and skill up to tackle projects or products. In the end, they follow very similar rules to prioritize work, engage all types of teams, and insist on adding value to people.

Honestly, you can pick any large building project as a great use case for these core skills, but that can be a little boring to read for non-architects. So, I’m selecting a more interesting set of projects that demonstrate how some practices are evolving to adopt a more product-based approach that aligns very closely with AGILE practices.

Let’s take a look at three examples of how an architect, especially an architectural researcher, makes a great product owner through the breakdown of abilities within a shared process of Design Thinking. Using the triple diamond model that diverges to gather information and then converges on a mini-conclusion, here are three projects that show an alignment of skills during DISCOVERY, IDEATION, and DELIVERY.

Discovery

Architects start with the intended function and use of each space (features), how people interact within them (UX), and any requirements for the build that need to be met (code dependencies). Analysis of these data results in meaningful insights that converge into key design drivers that guide design choices. User personas and user stories are becoming more popular with architecture teams as well to tell this story to the client and keep the human experience in focus throughout the design process.

One example is a project looking at the improvement of the fan experience within the stadium VIP clubs of a sports client. The team developed a digital tool to gather activities from onsite observation and combined it with informal interviews of fans during a game. The digital capture of activities allowed us to generate activity maps and analyze what people were doing, where they were doing it, and what gaps or pain points we could re-design the space to enhance that experience. Discovering these insights guided the design team and the client on what was needed to improve the fan experience and where those improvements needed to occur. More info provided here.

Ideation

An architect translates ideas into a functional form, but this also includes the phenomenological design of what a person will experience when occupying that space. To clarify this invisible layer of human experience the architect prioritizes insights from the discovery phase and generates many iterations of concepts. A typical day will consist of multiple interactions with designers and engineers to present and refine creative solutions through a common process of sketch, prototyping, and testing.

Sketching gives everyone a clear depiction to get on the same page and present feedback. The prototype is often a 3D digital model or physical build of the sketch to bring it into the third dimension. Testing consists of mental exercises, digital simulations, and project meetings where the teams involved compare it against the design drivers. These steps might often be understated as an official process since they are practiced every day and have become equivalent to breathing, but it is how we make the world around us that fits the needs and desires of the public.

A good example of this process is the Sensory Cocoon. It is a freestanding interior structure for children on the autism spectrum to help customize their sensory environment. Empathy and incremental ideation were critical during its development because the environment around these users is essentially attacking them. The team built three different prototypes, testing the construction, size, shape, functionality, and material selection against user scenarios, expert feedback, and physical requirements. The process resulted in a novel kit-of-parts solution that could be replicated by others with a fully functional product installed in a high school helping real students. More info is provided here.

Delivery

Architects focus a lot of energy on the coordination of a good construction set, but project delivery methods are starting to resemble agile processes. Methods like “just-in-time” delivery and “design-build” construction are shifting the playing field of how we approach work. Some projects start with a minimum viable product (MVP) to get a functional piece of work into the field quickly. Doing so allows for testing the impact of an implemented solution to provide better insight into the next installment, similar to pushing out the next update of a mobile or web application. Producing an MVP for architects is typically best suited for small or interior projects that might be repeated elsewhere, like the Sensory Hub.

The Sensory Hub is the first version of a sensory space that provides a wide range of interventions for children with special needs. After consulting 30+ experts on autism and neurological conditions, conducting a thorough literature review, and interviewing parents with children on the autism spectrum, the team found that we essentially have no thorough understanding of how to design spaces for this population.

So, the team of architects and researchers decided to break down and aggregate common interactions (user experiences) that could be uncovered to design interventions (features) specific to functions that benefit high school students. Testing the hypothesis that specific types of engagements would help, the team designed an experiment to observe how students engaged with the hub. Learn more about this multi-award-winning project here.

Conclusion

These examples present three core affinities of the modern architect that align with the role of a product owner. Architects are product owners with architectural subject matter expertise, which encompasses a lot more than buildings. Comparing the two roles, it’s not hard to see the similarities in the rules we follow.

Delivering a building design leverages the same design thinking and agile delivery methods. Goals are set early by the client for the occupants(users). The design team gathers data and synthesizes insights into key design goals. The team then ideates on prototypes, testing the user experience, client needs, and technical compliance. In the end, we assemble the final set of documents (product) or digital models of the best solution (release), and when we can, we evaluate the impact it has on humanity.

Architects and product owners are critical roles with similar skill sets that help unite humanity within a beautiful and functional space, but in different forms, physical and digital. Maybe we’ll see more implementation of modern product development methods alter the ancient stubborn practices of architecture. I hope so.

Cheers!

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