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Humbly disagree with your last conclusion. While I agree about wanting a private+quite space. The real demand is for a solution that pleases everyone. Open and

Humbly disagree with your last conclusion. While I agree about wanting a private+quite space. The real demand is for a solution that pleases everyone. Open and noisy floors with free beer,glass divided spaces, sound proofed spaces,secure access controlled rooms,etc... Being able to arrange desired environment at desired scale is the real value. If you have 20 team members with 5 remote and you work on extremely sensitive/confidential stuff. Maybe you have 8 devs that need to work in a quite space out of which half prefer free beer and an open relaxing area to take a break. Maybe you need a very secure meeting room that are friendly to having all your remote workers and on site staff easily book a time and collaborate. Maybe you have creative people and managers that want easy access to them and you want it to resemble an open space. If a company can rent empty floors on office buildings and deploy desired configurations for multiple tenants... I think that's the real "WeWork" demand. Imagine if a remote worker wants to come into the office for a few weeks and wants a privacy friendly quiet office, "WeWork" would deploy that space on the same floor othet your other staff (or as close as possible) for those few weeks,after that the space would be reclaimed for use by any other tenant. You can even upsell different room configurations and designs. Heck,if it was me I would even offer converted shipping containers ,doesn't matter so long as I can make the office space config look and feel identical.

mncharity 7y ago
And 1080p glasses arrive next year. Beginning of the next big platform migration and software rewrite. But we're still tied to keyboards. "Screenless" laptop use relaxes some ergonomic constraints, so perhaps comfy chair and floor work might see an up tick. And head tracking means you're looking in more directions, which expands potential distractions. Perhaps "I have nicely blank walls and quiet visual field" becomes desired. "Are sofas and eye googles the next cost-optimized office plan?" But HUD and ambient information seems to have a different feel than the current laptop, phone, and wall screen combo. Sure you could point your phone at someone and get information, but simply seeing people with a halo of information is pragmatically very different. And we haven't even started to talk about how that might change organizational opportunities and constraints. Or the office infrastructure to support them. We're entering poorly scouted territory.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  Your comment makes little sense as a reply to mine,wrong comment?
  - mncharity 7y ago
    > desired environment The desired environment depends on the technology in use. A large change in technology, might significantly alter the desired environment. This increases both the value of customization, but also the current uncertainty about what might be needed. In the past, having office phones on desks, and calls that couldn't easily follow you, increased the importance of having secretaries, and of remaining within chaseable distance of them. Current desks bare but for power and network, depend on laptops existing. If work in VR meant everyone having a 3 meter mat and waving their arms (it actually doesn't) that would impact office layouts. Having conference room scheduling, means not having to wander around trying to find one not in use. If AR becomes a viable screen substitute/supplement in the next year or few, and displays start disappearing from desks, that makes it easier to hot swap desks. But that also raises new challenges for open office plans. Instead of being visually focused on a little opaque wall in front of you (the display), you're now looking around much more, seeing more of your physical surroundings. So open-office visual distraction may become an issue similar to their current auditory distraction. And while there's been a long-term trend of human office interactions, once handled by colocating physically, increasingly being handled virtually, it's been a slow trend. But it may not remain slow. Some imaginary level of virtual presence would be a fully functional substitute for office presence. Whether actual technology will approach that substitution gradually, or with punctuated equilibria where some large set of constraints and opportunities on office design suddenly change, seems unclear. Things-remain-largely-unchanged is always a good bet, except when you lose it. If changing technology increases the distance between desired environments and installed base, that increases the opportunity for the customization you describe. But also a raises a long-term risk, that the ecology of office use changes out from under you. Though I was just in an office originally built, as an office, in the early 1900's... so maybe not?

mncharity 7y ago

And 1080p glasses arrive next year. Beginning of the next big platform migration and software rewrite. But we're still tied to keyboards. "Screenless" laptop use relaxes some ergonomic constraints, so perhaps comfy chair and floor work might see an up tick. And head tracking means you're looking in more directions, which expands potential distractions. Perhaps "I have nicely blank walls and quiet visual field" becomes desired. "Are sofas and eye googles the next cost-optimized office plan?" But HUD and ambient information seems to have a different feel than the current laptop, phone, and wall screen combo. Sure you could point your phone at someone and get information, but simply seeing people with a halo of information is pragmatically very different. And we haven't even started to talk about how that might change organizational opportunities and constraints. Or the office infrastructure to support them. We're entering poorly scouted territory.

badrabbit 7y ago
Your comment makes little sense as a reply to mine,wrong comment?
- mncharity 7y ago
  > desired environment The desired environment depends on the technology in use. A large change in technology, might significantly alter the desired environment. This increases both the value of customization, but also the current uncertainty about what might be needed. In the past, having office phones on desks, and calls that couldn't easily follow you, increased the importance of having secretaries, and of remaining within chaseable distance of them. Current desks bare but for power and network, depend on laptops existing. If work in VR meant everyone having a 3 meter mat and waving their arms (it actually doesn't) that would impact office layouts. Having conference room scheduling, means not having to wander around trying to find one not in use. If AR becomes a viable screen substitute/supplement in the next year or few, and displays start disappearing from desks, that makes it easier to hot swap desks. But that also raises new challenges for open office plans. Instead of being visually focused on a little opaque wall in front of you (the display), you're now looking around much more, seeing more of your physical surroundings. So open-office visual distraction may become an issue similar to their current auditory distraction. And while there's been a long-term trend of human office interactions, once handled by colocating physically, increasingly being handled virtually, it's been a slow trend. But it may not remain slow. Some imaginary level of virtual presence would be a fully functional substitute for office presence. Whether actual technology will approach that substitution gradually, or with punctuated equilibria where some large set of constraints and opportunities on office design suddenly change, seems unclear. Things-remain-largely-unchanged is always a good bet, except when you lose it. If changing technology increases the distance between desired environments and installed base, that increases the opportunity for the customization you describe. But also a raises a long-term risk, that the ecology of office use changes out from under you. Though I was just in an office originally built, as an office, in the early 1900's... so maybe not?