It’s not a new question, should something be built to be beautiful or should it be focused on usability instead? I’ve seen this question play out while developing web sites and print materials for years. The sweet spot is that the design actually improves usability like the iPhone that’s both beautiful and easy to use – “your world in your pocket” as Steve Jobs said. From my experience, that’s very difficult and very rare. In a past life, my company mailed two 16-page full color magazines out to employees to help them make their benefits decisions each year but no one ever read them and the call center was jammed for two weeks. So, over the course of five years, we went to a simple postcard and an interactive web site with good content and modeling tools and the call center heard crickets chirping rather than the phones ringing. It can work the other way too, one time I was building a web site and the prototype was so ugly (against my will by the way) that people couldn’t figure out how to use it. Don’t worry; we fixed it!

Until yesterday though, I never realized how different the design of an elementary school building could be or the outside pressures for functionality that influence design. I am lucky enough to be on a team that’s designing a new K-5 elementary school in the district where my kids attend. It’s an expensive and important decision – but it’s also a confusing one that’s filled with trade-offs about expenses (of course this is a public project), utility, instructional needs, access requirements, etc. Here are my observations from a tour of four schools:

1. Why build computer labs with desktop PC’s when every student has their own iPad? This one has been solved by a regulatory requirement unfortunately – all the standardized tests that students are required to take and the fact that they are taken online, on computers that must be hardwired to a network. So, you have to both waste the space on computer labs and buy all of the equipment as well.
2. At one school we visited, they had used a beautiful industrial design throughout that carried through to the entryway. But, birds built nests on the beams and sat on the lights and exposed pipes and pooped on the children and visitors as they walked underneath each day. The solution, compromise the design by adding some ugly screens and netting.
3. One school put their media center – a combination library and technology hub in the center of their school and put windows all around to let in natural light from the surrounding hallways. Now you have a fishbowl where kids – remember those 600 people that you’re building the school for – lose focus while inside the lab because everyone who walks by is always waving or showing off.
4. What colors should you use? The temptation at an elementary school is to go with primary colors but yellow can look dirty and red can be a little too emotional. Green is great because it can represent peace and harmony in the right shades and blue can be calm and friendly – do you think it’s an accident that the logos for Facebook and twitter are both blue?
5. Do you add enough parking to accommodate every parent or guardian when all of them only come to the school at the same time a couple of days a year?
6. Another dirty example. Would you ever put carpet in the lunchroom to reduce noise when you know that kids spill everything? It’s apparently cheaper and less slippery but really?
7. What about recreational or community space? The main purpose of the building is to instruct students but gyms and soccer fields and rooms for groups to meet are in short supply and after all, the community owns this building. So, do you design flexible space into the cafeteria and classrooms so they can be used outside the school day? One school we saw had a partnership with the city that threw in the money for a second full size gym.
8. How about lockers? Do you put them in the classrooms for easy access and require kids to share the space? Do you put them in the hallway outside the classrooms where you have more space? Do they have doors or not? What about space under the locker for wet boots?
9. Security is a huge concern in the post-Columbine world. Some experts say to take out all of the windows so those who would do harm are left in the dark and others say put more in because natural light is better for learning and so authorities can easily see into the space.
10. I’ll end where I started, with technology. Do you put screens and projectors and so called “smart boards” everywhere or do you design the space for the future more flexibly with walls that can be projected and written on with the use of a new adhesive film. What about all those iPads, do you put Apple TV in every room so you can go right from each student’s iPad to an LED LCD on the wall?

Those are just the top ten things that stuck with me. I’m going to be living this project over the next six months and then hopefully seeing a great new school in 2016 that will make students, staff and our community proud! Let me know if you have ideas and wish us luck.