Designer Perspective

BY MARTI KONSTANT

Marti Konstant is a designer, artist, workplace futurist, growth analyst, author, speaker, and founder of the Agile Careerist Project. She’s led programs for Samsung Mobile, Apple, Tellabs, Platinum Technology, Clear Communications, and more. What was a role that gave you a glimpse into your future? As designers and thinkers, what you bring to the table is your experience, it’s your stories about the workplace. We’re influenced by what we’ve been through in the past. It’s our context and our content for the future. The future is designed by creatives and optimists. Today we can think about designing a future that people want before they even know it. But before stepping into the future, it’s important to bring our past to the present. Jeanne Gang, founding principal and partner of Chicagobased Studio Gang, delivered a keynote at NeoCon 2021 and talked about the importance of bringing the past into the present of some of the buildings and refurbishing projects that she was working on. The purpose of the past isn’t just for us to look back at the good old days, but it’s for us to really understand the importance of noticing the signals and the trends and patterns so that we can use it for future projects. We’ve had several industrial revolutions up until this point. The workplace has changed a lot since the ʼ40s and ʼ50s. Landlines and memos were used, there was a typing pool, and it was an open office environment. Going into the ʼ60s and ʼ70s, the concept of action design was introduced to the design and space world. It was elegant and expensive, but now has morphed to what we call today the cubicle.

THROUGH A SPECTRUM OF MATERIALITY CHOICES, HAWORTH'S "PERGOLA" OFFERS A BROAD RANGE OF SPACE AND ROOM SOLUTIONS THAT ARE SCALABLE IN PERFORMANCE AND APPLICATION.

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Going into the 2000s, we began to see more of an open office environment. Employees are starting to have more of a say of where they work. Today in 2021, we’re now seeing a lot of de-densification with the pandemic and the shift to work from home. And people are more concerned about health and wellness.

If you’ve ever been to DisneyWorld, there’s something called Spaceship Earth. It’s a ride that you can get on and answer a series of questions to better understand how you would like to build your future. It asked questions like how you spend your spare time, what you want to drive to work, etc. When I was done, I had a flying car and a hydroponic garden. It was a magnificent thing. But life is not that easy. It’s not just a series of questions.

Whenever I deliver a keynote, I share this acronym to help my audience remember my presentation. I like to call it Challenge your DNA. D – disrupt. N – Notice. A – Act. This is what it takes to build your future. Challenge your assumptions. Disrupt the model. Notice signals/ trends and be prepared to experiment. Then act.

A common assumption is that work is a place. But what if we thought of work as an idea? Work could be a smart workplace. And that’s something that’s been impacted by the pandemic. It’s time to reshuffle, rethink and recalibrate to design this future.

Out of all the solutions I’ve seen lately, especially at NeoCon in October, there were so many designs for satellite offices, for regular offices, for remote offices. We’re flexibly expanding what it means to support the central business district within cities. You only have to look on Google to find out that people like you are designing thousands of products that users can get online right now to make the work from home experience better, whether it’s storage solutions or adjustable desks with built in electronics.

So, if work is an idea, it might be time to untether work from a place. Of course, it’s in a physical place, but if we take it away from a place in our minds, we might be able to imagine solutions for our workplaces.

At NeoCon I got to see the pergola that was introduced by Haworth. This is an idea that’s been coming, and not necessarily from the pandemic. It was designed during the timeframe before then, but its time has come and it’s giving employees the opportunity to have a voice and a choice of where and how people want to work.

I also noticed a large number of private spaces—office pods that people could go into for privacy. Privacy is going to be a really big thing and it has been in the last 18 months. The new work tent devised by Steelcase is something that addresses open space but still gives some privacy. Designers are now promoting neurodiversity, mobility and privacy into their solutions.

A big trend I’m noticing everyone talking about: hybrid. Research shows that 77% of workers want remote work some of the time, whether it’s a few days a week or just one. It’s the flexibility to make that decision. Research also shows that 33% will leave their jobs if remote work is no longer an option. This is an uncomfortable stat. We know that there’s a great resignation going on right now. People are moving. They’re highly mobile.

So, what will you do as designers with the certainty of hybrid? And what will it look like one year from now? Two years? It will certainly be different than it is right now. The definition will evolve. The goal is to adapt, or you will be left behind.

There’s a lot going on in technology right now and it’s so important to stay caught up. Architects are now starting to use this idea of digital twins so they could build a virtual model of what it is they’re designing. We are in a continuous learning business. It is not a one-and-done. When I started my first job some of the knowledge lasted for several years and that’s just not the case anymore.

The most important thing to remember is that when change happens, don’t do nothing. Good change or bad change, like the pandemic, the worst thing you can do is stagnate.

Design and future thinking can defy time and space. But how does one think about the future before it happens? There’s a great branding exercise I like to use. Write a press release about what your future looks like five years into the future. I highly suggest you try this and see what ideas you’ll discover. s p

MARTI KONSTANT