Colloquia

Summary

Van Keulen Interieurbouw is a leading Dutch company specializing in retail, supermarket, office and private interiors. The company employs 500 people and has its own production facility where wood, plexiglass and metal are processed. The company also has its own painting facility where the processed materials are painted. Additionally, Van Keulen Interieurbouw has a development department and created its own ERP system, customized to meet the interior builder’s needs. The company also markets this system to other interior builders.

In this master's thesis, Van Keulen's aim is the redesign of a silence box. Such a box, a compact space that provides a quieter environment than the typical open-plan office, improves concentration by reducing sound transmission through insulation and absorption. Beyond open-plan offices, these boxes can be useful in schools and libraries, for example. They can be used for private meetings and phone calls without fear of being overheard.

During the research phase, several strategies and relationships were identified that influenced the decision-making process. Further investigation of these factors led to a shift in focus from a redesign question to a strategic question. In order to try to solve this problem, the business strategy could be used, which resulted in a new main question: How to translate the business strategy to a design strategy?

This thesis explores the relationships between these different factors for deeper understanding. Next, the business strategy is explored. Given the lack of an explicit business strategy, the underlying strategies are explored by creating and using new concepts of silence boxes and evaluating the strategies that stakeholders consciously or unconsciously use when making decisions. These strategies were applied to the current portfolio of Silence Boxes of Van Keulen as a test case in order to see their impact. Based on the steps taken, a framework is presented to assist other companies translate their business strategy into a design strategy without following the same process as in this thesis.