Geneva Frank

Week’s Summary:

This week was an exceptionally busy week. Not only was it my birthday, when a group of people from the design firm took me to dinner to celebrate, but I also visited a few new sites, and participated in different design processes. I went to Littleton Adventist Hospital in Littleton, Colorado, and built a mock-up of a post-partum hospital room in order to get the staff’s feedback. I’m writing a separate post about that experience, discussing the process and outcome. On Wednesday, I went to the University of Colorado’s new sports medicine building where Boulder Associates previously designed the second floor. I assisted in the punch list that was occurring and marking up touch-ups that need to be done by placing a small piece of blue fabric on the scratches on the walls/floors, and making sure all the elements of the casework are functioning. This was a very interesting experience because it taught me how despite all efforts some things can turn out to be wrong, and require revision. The conversations between the designers, contractors, and construction workers are a must. For the rest of the week, I worked on redlines for Oregon Medical Clinic (OMG).  The drawings for design development are being released on Monday. After I completed the work on those, I went back to helping Lydia with the finish boards again, which I will continue to work on next Monday because some design elements have changed. 

Week’s Focus:

Boulder Associates uses several techniques to present designs to clients and they have changed over the years depending on the best practices. Usually, they create small vision/concept boards (11x17) at the start of a project to present clients with an overview, which helps the designers to get a better understanding of what the clients really want. With OMG, Annie created a few vision boards, one being a cool color scheme and the other a warm/neutral scheme. There are standard templates that we use to show renderings, and main features of a design, etc. The finishes are usually laid out afterwards to coincide with client meetings, and are determined by the stage of the project. Finish books are created and documented in order to provide an ongoing reference. The formats vary sometimes depending on the phase and the client. For YVMC, I’m creating finish boards for Lydia to show the client. Lydia said they don’t usually do finish boards anymore because they are quite large and difficult to carry to client meetings, however this client specifically asked us to provide them. Boulder Associates uses several graphic and computer-aided design programs such as the Adobe Suite; Revit, mainly for 3-Dimensional images; Sketch-up; and occasionally, AutoCAD. The firm also uses Bluebeam, which I had not heard of before. It is similar to Adobe Acrobat, but has many more resources, and is used to view PDFs. Drawings are viewed in Bluebeam, a format that can be marked up for redlines, and that also allows for designers' notes. I’m really enjoying learning about Bluebeam. 

Getting to Know Someone New:

This week, while participating in building the mock-up, I met several staff members of Littleton Adventist Hospital. It was very interesting to see all of their opinions on the mock-up, and also see how they work in the space. They all have a different process, and as designers it is our job to come up with a design for the hospital room that is beneficial to all of the people that work in the room, and simultaneously provides an environment that is comfortable for and meets the needs of the patient and his/her family. The hospital's staff really appreciated the mock-up that we provided. In fact, I believe that everyone involved on both sides of the design process appreciated it, and learned a great deal. This project clearly demonstrates that Boulder Associates truly wants to help its clients, and provide designs with optimum functionality that enable a client's employees to do the best job possible.