Small size means big opportunities when it comes to huddle room spaces

It’s 2022, do you know what’s happening in huddle rooms? If you think that these mini-sized spaces are primarily used by two or three people discussing a new product user interface or plotting a new sales opportunity, think again.

My last blog about huddle rooms looked at the way AV technology can accommodate meetings with different configurations of participants. In this article, we’ll look at the various types of work huddle rooms that could, and should, be used if your company really wants to maximize their potential.

5 ways to use huddle rooms

Different work activities have different demands. But that same huddle room space can work for them all.

1. Daily standup meetings – In many software companies, to support an agile development environment, each day starts with a five or ten-minute standup meeting with the development team to quickly review tasks, and what’s on their plate. While very informal, standing around with laptops in hand gets awkward. A huddle room would be more comfortable, especially when everyone needs to see some work, and it would also enable offsite colleagues to participate.
2. Training and demonstrations – Sales, support and product demos and training could all benefit from using huddle rooms, depending on the type of industry and discussion. For example, a huddle room can be relevant for a small-group software training session in which you’re showing screens, or even for a hands-on demo of certain types of physical products.
3. Brainstorming sessions – For forward-thinking innovators who create best through collaboration, these small spaces are perfect for generating big ideas and solving problems of, well, any size.
4. Reviews – Whether it’s a marketing review, financial review, or general content review, any formal assessment can be done better in a cozy space that facilitates sharing, communication, and collaboration. This in turn helps inspire the necessary changes that reviews are meant to precipitate.
5. All-hands meetings – Even the CEO isn’t above this one. A huddle room can easily accommodate all employees when they’re “Zoomed” in and give the company leader/s a comfortable space from which to share business goals, quarterly reports, and strategy updates.

AV innovation holds the key to success

In order to empower multiple types of work in the same huddle room space, the right equipment needs to be in place, ready for launch, and easy to use. Here’s what’s needed for each of the use cases discussed above.

1. Daily standup meetings are short by design, so no more than 10 seconds should be wasted on setting it up. This means some sort of quick-launch of settings must be in place. You also want to maintain that circle feel. So, if you have six people – three in the room and three remote – their faces need to be captured and displayed separately on screen like is done by the Front Row feature of Microsoft Teams. Of course, you’d want to see the daily task boards too.
2. Training and demonstrations can be improved by installing a second camera and supporting a second input feed, to demonstrate either a software tool or a physical device.
3. Brainstorming sessions may rely on existing tools like the integrated digital whiteboard in Teams or Zoom, which can be used by everybody. But since many people like to stand up and work at a physical board to get their creative juices flowing, an interactive flat panel display (IFP) may well be better. In that case, a second camera is needed to identify, crop, and share the whiteboard, automatically and in real-time, so that everyone, in the room and beyond, can be part of the experience.
4. The AV equipment required for project reviews and similar types of work is less futuristic. Screens are cheap after all, so adding a second one to get that face-to-face feel with half a dozen people joining remotely is well worth the investment. Of course, when choosing a camera, it should be one that zooms in on the speaker. For something more specific, like a mechanical design review for engineers, the whiteboard functionality would apply again.
5. Finally, for the all-hands meeting, there are two important needs. As the focal point, the CEO should be the only person seen and heard – with a focused camera and dedicated microphone. On the flipside, no one wants to feel like they’re speaking to themselves. So, two medium-sized display screens should be included. One for convenient presentation of the content, and the other with a dynamic grid of the many people joining remotely.

Bringing it all together

Equipping a huddle room for any type of work delivers more value. It not only makes it easier and more convenient to collaborate and engage, but it also makes it more ubiquitous – taking the huddle room’s uses far beyond spontaneous “chats” between coworkers, all the way up to the CEO speaking to the whole company.