In this post: Standardizing interfaces, platforms and support creates a familiar experience in every space, while the technology behind it must be designed around how each room is built and used.
As organizations add and update meeting spaces, standardization has become a common goal for IT and facilities leaders. The reasoning is sound. Employees moving between offices and buildings should not have to relearn how to start a meeting every time they walk into a new room, and IT teams should not have to support a different system in every space.
But meeting room technology standardization is often misread as making every room identical. In practice, the meeting rooms that perform best share a consistent experience while relying on technology tailored to each space.
Consistency should start before anyone enters the room. Employees at every location should use the same workflow to find and reserve a room with the required capacity and technology, invite other participants, and find their way to the space. When booking works one way at headquarters and another way at a regional office, the meeting experience is uneven before it begins.
Once in the room, starting the meeting and joining the call should be as simple as pushing one button. The user interface should be familiar from room to room, so employees know what to expect regardless of location and need little or no training. The method for sharing content should be clear and standardized as well. An employee who has shared a presentation in one room should be able to do the same in any collaboration space without having to scan a QR code or read a detailed instruction sheet to figure out what to do.
Most importantly, companies should select one unified communications platform, whether Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, or Cisco Webex, for both meeting rooms and desktop conferencing, to help maintain a consistent user experience. Employees use the same tools at their desks and in the conference rooms, so moving between them is seamless.
The same principle applies behind the scenes. Standardized support processes, centralized monitoring, and consistent documentation give IT teams one way to manage every room. When rooms are monitored from a single view and documented consistently, issues can be identified and resolved faster, and support does not depend on knowing the history of a particular space.
While the user experience and user interface should be as consistent as possible, the technology behind them cannot be one-size-fits-all. Each room has its own functional requirements and physical characteristics, and the audiovisual solution must be adapted to both. A huddle room, a boardroom and a training room serve different purposes, and the technology must support the specific use cases of each space.
The physical characteristics of a room affect many design decisions. Display size and the number of displays depend on the room's dimensions and the participants' field of view. The camera's field of view must capture everyone at the table, and speaker coverage and microphone pickup must account for the space's size and acoustics. Equipment that performs well in a small, carpeted room may not perform as well in a larger room with hard surfaces. The consistency in the experience depends on variation in the design.
Some spaces are particularly challenging. Multipurpose and divisible rooms must work as one large space and as separate, smaller rooms, often within the same day. The rooms with movable furniture change layout from one meeting to the next, which affects where participants sit relative to cameras, microphones and displays. These rooms require careful planning to ensure the same reliable experience across all configurations.
In every case, the audiovisual solution has to be designed to meet AV industry standards and building codes. Standards provide a common benchmark for performance across rooms of different sizes and purposes, and compliance with codes protects the organization and the people using the space.
Standardizing meeting rooms comes down to deciding where to draw the line on consistency. Booking, joining, content sharing and the communications platform should work the same way in every room, as should support, monitoring and documentation. The displays, cameras, microphones and speakers should be selected and placed for each room's purpose, size, and acoustics. With that division in place, employees can walk into any room and start a meeting without help, and IT can manage every space with the same processes.
To design a consistent meeting room experience across your organization, schedule a workplace strategy consultation and visit ourforte.com to learn more.