Top 5 Must-haves for a Great Huddle Room

5 Must-Have Features for a Huddle Room

In the yesteryears, businesses often focused on designing one or two boardrooms packed with the latest technologies. With office infrastructure costing a premium, the average workplace appears to be shrinking. Today, the conferencing and office AV trend in enterprises have moved towards creating multiple small huddle rooms.

Huddle rooms are meant for collaboration and designed for getting work done. Businesses of all sizes and industries have begun opting for compact and agile rooms as a way for small teams to work together. Huddle rooms require little physical space and are considered by many as the most productive rooms in offices. Whether your office is thinking of creating a new huddle room or simply upgrading a current one, here is a list of top must-haves for a great huddle room by AV professionals.

DISPLAYS – PROJECTOR OR FLAT PANEL SCREENS

Teams shouldn’t have to rely on flocking around a laptop to view a presentation or video conference call with another team. Be it idea generation, discussions, presentations or simply a video conference call with global teams, the availability of a display to share a screen is critical for a great huddle room. Depending on the size of your room and your budget, a basic multimedia HD projector or a TV display between 42”-50” should be sufficient.

Tip: When deciding on a mounting height or viewing height, we recommend staying close to eye level, making it ideal both for viewing and for video conferencing sessions.
.

FURNITURE – MINIMAL AND FUNCTIONAL

Huddle rooms are designed to be multi-functional. So, aim to have minimal furniture that can be moved around depending on the requirement and type of meeting. The typical huddle room will have seating provision for four to five with durable work surfaces. You could also aim to minimize clutter by opting for integrated cable cubbies or switching completely to wireless presentation solutions.

Tip: You could use your favorite search engine to look up interesting and functional furniture for offices.

WHITEBOARD – SPACE FOR VISUALIZATION

Whiteboards can act as a stellar parking lot for ideas. They help you visualize your priorities and provide an easy method to modify ideas. No matter how big or small the idea is, whiteboards have acted as a great place to congregate and brainstorm. Be it traditional white enamel or interactive whiteboards (IWB) or just a pane of glass, ensure you don’t overlook the ability to write out ideas and concepts in the huddle room. At the end of your meeting, simply snap a few pictures of your work so you don’t have to write it down again. To take things further, today’s interactive whiteboards let you annotate content and save it in cloud servers to be accessed later.

VIDEO COLLABORATION – BRINGING TEAMS TOGETHER

Video conferencing allows team members to have a seat at the meeting from wherever they are. So if your team includes members and participants located at another office location, a high definition video conferencing solution is a smart investment for communication and collaboration. When installing a video conferencing solution for your huddle room, ensure to look for a solution that has robust features, and is easy-to-use. Additionally, you could also use an all-inclusive speakerphone for your audio and video calls in smaller 4-6 seater huddle rooms.

Tip: Opt for a cloud-based video conferencing solution for a hassle-free user experience.

AMBIANCE – LIGHTS AND ACOUSTICS

With numerous offices transitioning to a more open floor plan concept, it’s more important than ever to have designated collaboration spaces free from noise and distractions. Sound insulation help prevents noise leakage in and out of the huddle room, and a professional-quality microphone setup can remarkably increase the quality of a meeting with full room coverage and native ambient noise reduction.