Intuitive Campus
Intuitive is a medical device company that creates surgical robots and robotic diagnostic tools. The company has around five thousand employees, two thousand of which work in Sunnyvale, CA. Since so many people work in Sunnyvale, the campus has sprawled out across Kifer Road. All employees are spread out across 8 buildings, with more buildings and parking lots currently being built. The campus spans 1.2 miles from end to end and this image helps in illustrating that.
MAIN HEADQUARTERS
As noted earlier, Intuitive has 5,000 full time employees worldwide. Main hiring flows through the headquarters. Important C-level employees, Finance, and HR reside in this building. They are a major force in creating employment opportunities in this region.
CONGESTION
The speed limit at Intuitive’s parking lots are 15MPH. This roundabout that shows which way is the correct orientation of it has always confounded drivers at the company. Although the speed limit is 15MPH, people drive even slower at this roundabout as it is also an intersection where people walk between buildings. Congestion is a force within this lot.
PARKING
The amount of parking spaces almost mimic the amount of land Intuitive owns. For now, all parking is flat on one level. This has caused parking shortages at several buildings. Intuitive is currently building a new parking structure to accomodate additional buildings and employees.
OUTDOOR PATIO
This space is utilized for outdoor seating. It’s also an area where seems to busiest during lunch hours. This illustrates the human habitation force as only employees utilize it during certain hours of the day. These areas are also decorated with manicured trees, bushes, and grass. It is a force that makes people appreciate the “outdoors” while working in grey concrete buildings.
Forces
Click maps for enlarged & detailed view.
Force: Employment Space
These eight buildings represent the Sunnyvale campus of Intuitive. Since we are a medical device company, research and development requires a large workforce. Intuitive employs over 5,000 people and a bulk of the workforce works in Sunnyvale. Each building houses a workforce with diverse sections of the company including engineering, manufacturing, shipping, information technology, finance, accounting, human resources, etc.
Force: Manicured Space
The area is filled with manicured bushes, trees, and grass. It takes up some space, but creates some natural beauty in an area filled with concrete. Trees provide cover for some cars in the parking lot, which is especially nice for hot summer days. The spots closer to these trees are normally the most coveted spots in the parking lot due to this fact. Intuitive has a company park where events are held. This is the largest density of trees in the area.
Force: Human Habitation (Recreation)
Any opportunity for employees to be outside is a good thing. In this four building layout in the middle of the map, there are two main areas where people can eat outdoors. Patio seats, picnic tables, and grassy areas allow employees to eat outdoors. During lunch, these areas are incredibly busy and utilized in a meaningful way. You can sometimes hear people talk about work as the outdoors gives people a different context. At Intuitive’s park, a baseball field, running trails, and event space are utilized for special company events and engagements. Note: only a few buildings have outdoor habitation space for eating outdoors.
Force: Congestion
Most of the land use in this area is utilized on buildings and parking. Congestion becomes an issue as people start trickling into work. There are several roundabouts in the campus that cause cars to drive more carefully. The speed limit is 15mph in the parking lot. Cars drive in single file and the central area with the roundabouts cause the most amount of morning parking lot congestion.
Force: Parking
Parking is a complex force in this company. The amount of employees that commute to Sunnyvale outnumber the number of parking spots. Since the parking spots are on a single layer and there is only a limited amount of land, this parking lot fills up quickly. Recently, there has been valet parking added to employee benefits in order to alleviate the parking congestion. It’s also forced a few employees to find other ways to commute to work, such as public transit and ride sharing. There’s also parking for electric vehicles that is highly sought after. As more of the workforce is environmentally conscious, the purchase of plug-in electric vehicles has increased. The parking near the plug-in stations has gotten increasingly congested.
All Forces
Layering the maps show the campus and all of the forces that hold this campus together. Forces work in harmony to create a campus with a large footprint. Intuitive’s campus easily spans over a mile from end to end. It’s diverse workforce commutes from all across the Bay Area.
Hi Daniel,
Excellent work! I only have two minor comments/suggestions. The first is, are you planning to add a legend? Unless you read through your earlier forces, it is a bit hard to tell which colors mean what, unless there is a legend I am totally missing – which is also completely possible!
The other thing is perhaps you can make your base map a bit lighter? I think it is hard to see some of the detail in the map right now with the darker shade of grey.
Awesome work, keep it up!
Thanks so much for your feedback Gillian. I went back and vectorized my entire map. The pdf download at the end now has a legend for my maps.
Hi Daniel,
I’m here providing insights derived simply by reading by looking at your map. I have not yet read your post about your forces, so this is an honest attempt at generating insights from what you’ve represented.
Without knowing anything, it looks like the color focuses on a few hotspots in an area near the Lawrence Caltrain stop, which I believe is somewhere near San Jose. The purple highlights parking lots around some buildings and greenspaces. Zooming into one of them I can see the name “Intuitive Surgical”. I’m making an assumption that these buildings make up this company’s campus. Small orange arrows exist to show the direction of car traffic on these campuses.
Overall, this map shows me a few things:
– It is company that has a distributed campus across a small area.
– I’d also assume they are fairly large considering the many buildings.
– At this company, employees seem to drive to work, but are also close enough to the Lawrence station to commute by train.
– Lastly, they are provided with some nice scenery including a giant pond. Do the employees get to take advantage of this?
Thanks!
Alex
Awesome Alex. I’m glad you were able to read my map well. The answer is yes. We utilize the park for team and all company summer picnics and team soccer matches. People also walk/run the trails. It’s nice to get away from the concrete jungle (Intuitive’s campus) and get more into nature after work.
I appreciate the feedback good sir. I took into account your feedback and updated my maps with vector based maps. Have a look when you get a chance.
Great job!
Hi Daniel,
I really like your force maps so far, they’re simple and clear to understand. I think you also chose some good forces to consider. I think that the force “Human Habitation” might be a little confusing because people work in the buildings too. Is there another name for this force that better describes the outdoor lunch areas you described? I also think that you might be able to push the traffic map a little further. Are there other areas that get busy? Have you considered foot traffic as well as vehicle traffic? Great job so far!
Daniel,
Consider maybe adding some labels to your buildings, as i can see that if they contain different teams (marketing in one, legal in another, IT in a different one), it might add some interesting depth to your maps without really adding or taking away any visual aspects.
Another suggestion, your “Traffic” map feels a little empty, are the roundabouts really the only place where congestion occurs? Are you even mapping congestion? Is there an exit that fills with cars at the end of the day, or a particular part of the parking lot that fills up first in the mornings? These things might be a little tougher to map, but should add some interesting details that might otherwise be skipped over
Good eye Greg on the traffic part. I updated everything to say congestion instead.
Hi Daniel,
I like your interpretation and your representation of each force! Your base map is very stable and easy to understand. I like the geometric and symmetrical building shapes which add more balance to your map. You use a great color choice to reflect each force and it is layered well on top of your grayscale base map. I wonder if you plan to present detailed elements such as patio seats, picnic tables, the speed sign, and the valet parking area with your forces.
Wow that’s great feedback Young Sun. I’m thinking about including more symbols in my maps when I layer them together. Colors tell one story, but I feel like symbols will also bring out more information from the map.
Hi Daniel,
That’s a really big company and campus for sure! Your force of “manicured space” was interesting because why everything we mostly see is technically “manicured” I could see how things were made for purely functionality versus purely aesthetics.
I also mentioned “traffic” as one of my forces, but it would be cool to be able to see the degree of traffic around certain areas!
Your maps were very clear! Great job!
Thanks Rona! Silicon Valley used to be a lot of farm land (which I suppose is also manicured for agriculture). I pointed it out to be a force because humans don’t seem to enjoy all concrete spaces. Even in metropolitan downtown areas, you’ll see trees dispersed around streets to breakup the monotony of concrete everywhere. Thanks for your feedback.
My gosh, that’s a big campus!
Daniel, I liked how your maps addressed the forces present in the entire area you focused. (In other words, they would fill the entire map if you layered your colorings on top of each other.)
Because of your choice to do that there were some interesting comparisons I could see: the amount of space dedicated to cars vs humans. And within that, a comparison between cars parked vs cars in motion (albeit agonizingly slow) and humans indoors vs humans outdoors.
I agree with Kathy – nice use of color (and lack of) to communicate effectively.
Appreciate your feedback Ken. There’s so much information that we could fit into these maps. Even after putting out this work makes me want to rethink how I want to include symbols instead of just letting colors tell a story.
Daniel, your maps are very clear and easy to understand. You effectively used layering and used transparency so the map was still visible underneath the highlights. Also, I think you used the simplicity of Okaham’s razor by removing the color from the map in the background. The color was unnecessary and by removing it, the most essential information is more apparent. Also, I can see how those traffic circles must get a ton of traffic because they connect to a lot of parking areas.
Thanks Kathy! That’s exactly what I was going for.