Future of Workplace
How might we create flexible yet cost effective workplaces for hybrid work?
Flexible Workplace “pod” prototype // Source: New York Times, “Google’s Plan for the Future of Work”
Client
Google
Year
2018 - 2021
Tasks
Research, Design, Program Management
Role
Lead
Lack of focus and collaboration in the workplace
Even before CV19, Google’s workplaces suffered; Googlers couldn’t focus or collaborate well at their desk. Additionally, many teams were so geographically distributed that typical meeting rooms were ill suited to handle the wide breadth of collaboration types within and across teams.
Temporary walls for spatial delineation and loose privacy Source: NYT, “Google’s Plan for the Future of Work”
Rapid deployable workplaces as a unique solution
I led over 20 design sprints with hundreds of geographically dispersed participants consisting of Googlers and industry experts, and I used design fiction, rapid prototyping, and user interviews to create a new narrative for workplaces. What we found was that not all work can be treated the same, and to accommodate highly collaborative and distributed work, our workplaces needed to become more diverse, adaptable and flexible. This meant creating a team-based “pod” clustering system for desk layouts and 1 min, 1 hr and 1 day deployable team space solutions.
“Desk hotelling” concept that remembers your settings. Source: NYT, “Google’s Plan for the Future of Work”
New forms of meeting rooms that prioritize emerging forms of remote collaboration Source: NYT, “Google’s Plan for the Future of Work”
Acoustically separated yet visually connected team-shared coding areas Source: NYT, “Google’s Plan for the Future of Work”