Each employee works individually, creating within the Design Challenge specifications and 30-45 minute time period. No one knows what the challenge will be until right before the stop watch begins and no one is allowed to use SketchUp or AutoCad, making each designer go back to the basics of hand sketching, model making and quick Photoshop or Illustrator assistance. At the end of the time allotment, everyone pins up their designs and ideas in the Conference Room, we grab a beer and we each have 90 seconds to present our design concept to the group.

It has been a blast so far! There is always a wonderful array of designs and it’s great to see each employee’s style come through their design concept. It’s also fun to see the various ways each employee takes on the Design Challenge – coming up with fantastical as well as practical options.

This past Friday the Challenge was a typical bike storage question: Design a bike system or solution to our bikes always cluttering up the office.

A handful of people toyed with the idea of hanging bikes from the ceiling – Katherine had a hot pink wall of bikes, creating a divider between the entryway and the office.

Justin designed a sea of bikes, acting as a divider between employee’s personal spaces.

Lee brought up the concept of the off-season when it’ll be cold and snowy, and therefore fewer bike commuters. She opted for different colored holders that would attach to the wall –aesthetically pleasing both when in use and when it’s too cold to bring your bike to work.

Alex opted for the Branding approach by putting Beyonce into his design, and as we all know, you can’t go wrong with B! He had the most practical concept of elongating the already useful storage space we have, for a specifically designed hanging bike system.

Our Office Manager Malina tried her hand at designing and surprised everyone by breaking out of the box of the Mapos office and opting for a ramp that would connect us to a neighboring building’s roof to park the bikes.

Daniel hit the ball out of the park in the first step of his three step process by telling everyone they needed to class up their bikes – “no more of this janky crap.”

So the plan is to get all of our bikes fixed up and lookin’ snazzy, have Beyonce perform for us on our neighbor’s roof while we hit our heads on bikes hanging from the ceiling and continue our design work inside until the next Design Challenge shakes up our thought process.