Fluid and flexible

It’s not something Milton Waddams would like. Milton, the stapler-hoarding shlub who spends most of the cult comedy Office Space having his desk relocated by an evil boss, would take one look at the Liquid Power & Data System and go right off the deep end. An office furniture system with this much flexibility could only lead to more discombobulation for poor Milton.

While he may not approve, it’s a safe bet a lot of others do. Manufactured by Bretford, a Franklin Park, Ill., education and business furniture company, the Liquid Power & Data System offers a host of workspace components that can be connected in a variety of ways, giving companies multiple options for situating their workers and simplifying the normally knotty process of running electricity and data lines to the workstations. As a company’s space and staffing needs grow and change, the system can change as well, accommodating everything from downsizing or upsizing to a move to larger quarters. And with electrical and fire safety codes varying across the country, its customizable power and data features offer distinct advantages.

The system was designed with input from people representing all of the groups that might potentially use it: the architects and designers who have to fill company floors with useable workspace; the facility managers who must move and set up the furniture; the tradesmen and IT personnel who have to run electricity and data lines to the system; and the end users themselves.

Extend its reach

Long a supplier of technology support products for computer labs and libraries in the K-12 market, Bretford entered the commercial furniture business about 10 years ago, creating an innovative “systems” approach to outfitting training and conference rooms. With the help of Design Concepts, Inc., Madison, Wis., and Formway Design of New Zealand, Bretford looked to extend its reach into the high-end office furniture business by creating a modular system that capitalizes on some trends it had identified.

The proliferation of the dot-com companies in the ’90s ushered in a need for office furniture that could accommodate rapid growth and sudden shifts in manpower and location, says William Lindeman, director - industrial design, Design Concepts. “Some of these firms were moving every six months to larger quarters, and there was a greater need for mobility, for quick setup and less-permanent fixtures because companies were less certain how long people would be in the space.”

That drove a movement toward freestanding office furniture and away from panelized furniture and its attendant hassles. But Bretford realized that while freestanding furniture was easier to move, it had its own host of problems with data and electricity lines.

The furniture industry tried to offer some solutions by modifying the panelized systems, Lindeman says. “But the problem with panel systems is you have to buy them in known shapes and use them to define known spaces. They are inflexible because they are based on a grid system. They can only turn 45 or 90 degrees. Bretford saw the need to create a power and data delivery system because all these people who are buying freestanding furniture don’t have a solution to that problem. And it also knew that companies didn’t want to be trapped in the grid system of cubes.”

Contrary to Milton’s experience in Office Space, the ubiquitous cube approach really doesn’t offer much in the way of mobility and organizational freedom. The panels are heavy, hard to connect, and setting up a new configuration isn’t just a matter of corralling a group of strong-backed workers. “If you look at what companies spend for the life of the furniture, over the lifespan of the product, the cost of the reconfiguration of the traditional panel system is more than the initial entry cost,” says Chris Petrick, Bretford’s director of marketing. “You have to hire laborers to break down and move the panel system, you have to involve the IT people, the electricians, and displace the workers. The whole process can take a week or more and require a lot of work and coordination to make it happen. Our system can be moved and reconfigured by two or three people over a Friday or Saturday night in about four hours.”

Site visits

To find the best way to free companies from their cube gridlock, Design Concepts immersed itself in the commercial furniture industry, conducting one-on-ones and site visits with the architects, interior designers and facility managers who face workplace design and implementation problems on a daily basis. “We had them participate in the process and provide feedback on our concepts and ideas as we created them. We spent time walking through their office buildings and talked to the people who sit in the spaces and the people who set up and wire them,” Lindeman says.

“We use a participatory design process which asks our clients to get involved. We also invite end users and the people who buy the product or have an active voice in the selection process. This way they have a say in the products that are going to be available for them to use in the next couple of years. I think a lot of companies have lost track of the fact that users are still one of the best sources for defining a need and are also capable of creating good solutions. It’s not designers sitting in a vacuum far away from the problem saying, ‘This is the best solution.’ ’’

Design Concepts looks at industry trends, known problems and why current solutions aren’t working, and any existing or near-future technologies that may have an impact. When the investigation starts bearing fruit, the client is brought in to examine the data and determine how to act. “It is actually pretty rigorous but you never know what is going to come out of it,” Lindeman says. “It is well-structured and hopefully what comes out are answers to the questions: How can we compete? How can we differentiate our solution? How can we offer a product that is going to be wildly successful from the client’s, the user’s and the manufacturer’s standpoint?”

Concept validation

One of the largest research portions of the Liquid Power project was a concept validation event which was held at Bretford’s showroom. Thirty-five furniture industry professionals were invited to view the new system - which incorporated Design Concepts’ ideas for handling data/power lines with Formway Design’s workstation expertise - and use a toolbox of options to solve various problems. Watching how these options were employed showed which ones were the most valuable and also pointed out which options were not used or were missing. “One of the things we found was that facility managers liked the flexibility of the system but they wanted to be able to control it,” Petrick says. “In other words, they didn’t want the end users adjusting and moving things because they might take more space or end up obstructing a fire lane. So we made a mechanism that allows you to move it in any configuration but then lock it down, using tool-free reconfiguration so that a facility manager or his team could get at it but the end user had no idea the mechanism was there.”

Participants also pointed out the need for increased privacy, leading to changes in the way the Formway Design workstations were screened from each other. “We learned a ton of other things that were really valuable,” Petrick says. “The best thing was, we covered all of our bases as far as who would have interface with the product. We wanted to make sure that it worked great for the facility manager, for the IT guy, the electrician and the end user.”

Responses to the validation event were placed on a matrix showing value and benefits, giving an indication of how successfully the participants felt the system met their needs. “We don’t use that information as a statistically accurate representation of how a market feels. We use it in a qualitative way. We were looking for key driving words or behaviors that supported a benefit and which told us that we did the job right,” Lindeman says.

Involve the end users

Design Concepts is a firm believer in involving the end users in the design process of any product. “We’ve found that’s one of the most powerful tools that we can use as designers and researchers,” Lindeman says. “Some industries do it a lot and some don’t do it at all and it is appalling to me that some don’t realize the potential there. The furniture industry is still struggling with furniture concepts designed in the ’60s and with designers who say, ‘This is what people want’ because they keep buying it. Large sales volume doesn’t necessarily mean a product is the best solution. Sometimes it means there needs to be a better one. ”

Getting consumer input is only half the battle. Once you’ve got it, you have to use it effectively. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve done our focus groups,’ but that data just sits there because so many companies struggle with how to use the research they have conducted in a meaningful way, one that turns it into good direction, useful user insights or just good design principles,” Lindeman says.

He offers a few choice tips on how to make the most of the research process. First, involve the product developers in the collection and analysis of the data. “We take our industrial designers along on the research interviews and let them witness the event. The greatest opportunity for creating insights is at the data collection phase, and that is 10 times more powerful than letting them look at a report two months later and saying, ‘Here is your design task.’

“The problem is that companies compartmentalize research activities. They have researchers who go off and do their magic and come back with reports and then the developers, designers and project managers sit there and try to read through the report and they can’t make sense out of it. And if you can’t make sense of something, you ignore it. So the data isn’t being translated into the heads and minds of the people who really can do something with it.”

Lindeman also recommends letting researchers interact with developers before the research methods are formalized and developed, to help them know how to make the information more meaningful. “If the developers tell the researchers ahead of time what they need to know, the research team can improve what it’s going to look for and how to present the data to the team who will use it. I have seen reports come back that were a half-inch thick and they never asked the fundamental questions; the researchers didn’t know what the team needed. But it’s not their fault. They just needed to know more about why the research is needed and how it will affect the team’s actions!”

Good fit

The Liquid Power system seems to be a good fit with the current emphasis on running leaner, nimbler businesses. “As speed-to-market becomes such a crucial part of a company’s strategic plan, communication and the ability to get the right groups of people together is paramount. Our system makes that so much easier than a fixed-panel system,” Petrick says.

And when (not if!) business improves and companies once again begin adding rather than subtracting workers, Petrick feels the Liquid Power system will be there to help them accommodate the new people. “The culture of an organization is often manifested in the office. Once you walk into somebody’s facility you get an idea of their goals as a company and how they feel about their people. As the economy turns around and companies start hiring again, the system’s aesthetics and comfort can create a welcoming environment that can be a huge help in attracting and retaining employees.”