This company is designing the future of office furniture

This article was first published in the October 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, a couple of hours' drive west of Detroit, is known as Furniture City. Establishing itself as the centre of the United States' furniture manufacturing industry at the end of the 19th century, the Great Lake State's second biggest city is still prolific in the field. As time passed, producers began to specialise. Now, office furniture is Grand Rapids' specialty.

The biggest and best-known company in the region is Steelcase, which has become the de facto provider of the world's office furniture. With revenues of just over $3 billion (£1.9bn) in 2014 and a net income of $87.7 million, it is the largest office-furniture manufacturer in the world. Those numbers represent a sharp turnaround for a business that was significantly damaged by the global financial meltdown of 2008. Steelcase credits its current buoyancy to the fact that its clients are not merely ordering desks, chairs and shelving, but completely reconfiguring their workspaces - ensuring, as the company literature says, they "fully respond to new ways of working".

This is borne out at Steelcase's new Innovation Center, a hub of constant improvisation and experimentation. Here, you find treadmills in front of stand-up desks in soundproof "enclaves", drop-in-drop-out video conferencing suites and strangely shaped lounge chairs. The place appears to be in a state of flux, ready to be ripped out and rethought at any moment. Steelcase has first-hand experience of re-imagining workspaces and creating new ways of working: until recently, the company's research and development operation had been housed in an enormous glass pyramid which was completed in 1989 at a cost of $111 million. In 2009, though, after a 99 per cent drop in profits, Steelcase decided to shift most of its production out of Michigan and rationalise its real-estate holdings. The Pyramid was vacated and Steelcase's designers, researchers and model makers were installed in a smaller (though now handsomely remodelled) former manufacturing plant just across from corporate headquarters.

The Pyramid had symbolised a commitment to R&D that went far beyond ergonomics, physiology and lumber support. In 2009, Steelcase knew that if the accommodation for its research team was more modest, its ambitions could not be. It would develop the smartest, most informed take on trends in the contemporary workspace and build product around those insights. It also used the relocation and downsizing of its research facility to test new ideas, to remake its own corporate culture and to work out how one leads the other. "If you want to change your culture, getting the physical space to match the body language is critical," says Steelcase CEO Jim Keane, a lean, 55-year-old Chicagoan, who has been in the post for 18 months. "And if you change the culture but don't change the space, the space will anchor behaviours in the past."

CEO Jim Keane, now CEO of Steelcase, joined the firm in 1997 . Behind him is a custom "library" wall design

Within the Innovation Center, Steelcase constantly reviews how its own space - and that of its clients - is used. It studies success stories at companies such as Apple and Nike, and projects run by design company IDEO and Stanford University's Institute of Design. It creates and re-creates office layouts and systems in order to discover how employees work within them. It records where people move, how long they stay in particular places and what they do there. Data is king: teams conduct interviews but also use sensors to track employee movement, both in-chair squirming and general mobility. Crucially, designers model furniture prototypes on-site as part of these experiments.

The company has other design and research centres in the US, Europe and Asia, and has forged partnerships with institutions such as MIT and Stanford to keep track of the latest academic research on the effects of the physical environment on creative thinking and, ultimately, productivity. The company invested $36m in R&D last year, and it has always maintained this spend at somewhere between one and two per cent of revenues, which is generous for the sector. "There are a lot of people working in environments designed for the person who had that job 20 years ago," says Keane. "I know we can make a difference to that." In its biggest break from the past, the company is designing around how people really behave, rather than some idealised goal. And today's workspaces are being squeezed. The British Council for Offices found that in 2013, the average office allowed 10.9 square metres per workstation, down from 11.8 square metres in 2009. The modern office is smaller and more densely populated than in the past. Part of what Steelcase is selling is strategies for squeezing personal space in smarter ways that will increase productivity. Its biggest long-term bet, though, is that work will still happen in offices.

According to Gallup's most recent "State of the American Workplace" report, published in January 2015, almost 40 per cent of full-time workers in the US work remotely, and of these, some 15 per cent are permanently out of the office. Many are working not at home, but in coffee shops and other "third places", to use the term coined by American sociologist Ray Oldenburg, author of The Great Good Place.

Steelcase, for obvious reasons, is focused on stalling and stunting the progression of the latte-and-laptop remote work trend. "If you are expecting people to commute every morning to get to a specific place, there has to be some pay-off," Keane says. "It has to be the best place they can work. However, if their dining room is better than the office you provide, then they should stay at home. And you should save even more money on real estate. "But companies are finding that business is much more about innovation and collaboration, which is based on trust, which is based on face-to-face interaction. So you don't want your employees to be in Starbucks or some co-working place."

The answer, or at least the answer Steelcase is selling, is not about working-playgrounds: the ping-pong tables and beanbags of the tech giants. Although it has Silicon Valley companies among its clients, it also has a good portion of the Fortune 500, from Boeing to General Electric. As Nikil Saval, author of last year's Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, says: "Steelcase's market is standardised solutions."

However, this is no longer selling, so the challenge is to find what will. "All of us grew up working in standard spaces," says Keane. "There were three sizes of cubicles and there were three sizes of private office. Eventually, there was just one size fits all. Well, that model is broken."

A semi-private breakout area at Steelcase's Innovation Center in Grand Rapids

The open-plan office - the cubicles of the American bullpen or the flat vistas of North European workspaces - has proved to be a poor way to engender employee happiness and productivity. Office workers are distracted once every three minutes, according to research from the University of California, and it takes 23 minutes to regain "flow", that happy condition of focused productivity. It's no wonder many workers are abandoning the office for Starbucks.

Steelcase's solution also began with the café. In 2009, it renovated its own HQ to create the WorkCafé, which integrated working spaces. It is now a sprawling area of tables, lounge chairs and even a library-like zone. There are power points everywhere.

A 2012 study by Gallup suggested that the most engaged workers spend up to 20 per cent of their time working remotely. A key part of Steelcase's renewal strategy has been to make the remote seem less, well, remote.

Using the WorkCafé as a laboratory, Steelcase observed how worker behaviour changed over time. Enclosed, individual spaces proved popular, so it added more. It also ensured that senior management used the café, legitimising it in the eyes of the other staff. "It takes a little time," says Keane. "In the first few days and weeks, it was all younger employees. But now you will find it's a cross section of ages and functions. There are early adopters and late adopters, but if you give it time, behaviours change. Give people a choice and they will make better decisions than we can make for them." This is Steelcase's big new idea.

Steelcase's WorkSpace Futures research unit is headed by Donna Flynn. Based in the Colorado mountains near Boulder, Flynn tele-commutes, only occasionally visiting Grand Rapids. Flynn trained as an anthropologist at Northwestern University in Chicago. She studied human trafficking, worked at a public policy think-tank and was all set to take the quiet road to academic tenure, before opting for corporate cut and thrust. She joined Steelcase four years ago and now has a 19-strong research team in the US, Paris and Hong Kong.

The team's key insight is that we need different kinds of space, at different times. Flynn talks about the civilised and productive office providing an "eco-system of spaces" to suit the task, or provide for post-task rest and renewal. She talks about an office that "humanises, empowers and connects" people, one that mobilises a kind of "collective genius". Steelcase has adopted the term "palette of place" to describe this. It also talks about a "palette of posture" - a system that encourages people to stand up, move around and sit down; and a "palette of presence": a range of places where people can meet, collaborate and connect with colleagues, real and virtual.

Activity-based working is the aim, and it requires spaces (and management) that allow for it. Emailing could be done at a conventional desk, or a standing desk, or not your own desk. Creating a new office ecosystem could mean sacrificing a desk for a locker and a variety of work stations: sealed-off, soundproof enclaves for periods of intense flow; small spaces for quick catch-ups; video-conferencing kiosks for têtes-à-têtes; and video-conferencing suites for virtual group meetings. Other spaces include project rooms, shielded conversation lounges and, crucially, personal retreats and quiet privacy zones.

The effects of being sat at a desk all day - internal organs compacted, blood pooling in our ankles - are well known. But it's the brain that Steelcase is interested in. The WorkSpace Futures team is working with neuroscientists to try to understand our capacity for distraction; why attention is a finite resource. Our brains can only manage four or five hours of sustained and concentrated mental effort before exhaustion. The point of the "ecosystem of place" is to provide spaces where that mental energy is not burned out by useless distraction.

Yet neuroscience also suggests that our limbic systems and prefrontal cortices - where all our knowledge work takes place - are hard-wired for distraction. The new and the different reward us with a dopamine rush. And once we are distracted we get ever more distracted.

Steelcase's most profound insights come when neuroscience and anthropology connect. Back when we were hunter-gatherers, the most distractable survived. Those whose peripheral vision picked up the prowling sabre-toothed tiger were the most likely to survive. This inheritance has left us susceptible to visual distraction - which is why it's almost impossible for you to resist that bouncing email icon at the bottom of your screen. Another challenge of the open-plan office is lack of privacy. For Steelcase, privacy is made up of acoustic, visual, territorial and informational components that are constantly shifting. But it insists that even in highly collaborative companies, people need private space and time to think, digest and process: counter-intuitively, effective collaboration requires private time. As Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking and a Steelcase collaborator, says: "There is a complete misunderstanding of what collaboration is. There are lots of people who need to go away, to be on their own to think, and then come back and share."

An office in the Innovation Center. The pink unit is a media:scape Lounge for large-screen collaborations

The Brody WorkLounge system, launched in April 2015, is the design that most clearly embodies Steelcase's mission to allow for professional private moments. Eight years ago, the company decided to move into furniture for school and universities. As product manager Mark Walters explains, the design that would later become Brody was initially imagined for college libraries.

The company examined how students spend time in libraries. It noticed that they gravitated towards lounge chairs when they wanted to generate some serious intellectual flow, often dragging the chairs to isolated spots and scattering books, bags and paraphernalia around them. They would then spend hours in the chairs, adopting all manner of curious poses: legs crumpled and twisted, shoulders hunched, spinal column out of whack. Steelcase determined on creating the ultimate work-friendly (and spine-friendly) library lounge-chair. And then realised that the chair could work in the office.

The Brody looks like a business-class seat in a new Airbus - an ergonomic cocoon designed, Walters says, to "protect you from yourself". The body is positioned in what Steelcase calls an "alert recline" with upper and lower back supported. An angled work-surface holds technology at eye level while an arm support relieves pressure on shoulders. The new worker is nomadic, often hauling around a rucksack, so it includes a built-in bag space. This allows the user to dip in and out of their bag without interrupting "flow". Finally, an opaque screen blocks out distractions without sinking the user into gloom. The Brody is, Walters says, "a psychological safe spot".

Every new Steelcase design begins with the behavioural research coming out of Flynn's WorkSpace Futures unit, along with observations in the field. Then the company designs, prototypes and builds. Before it launched its top-of-the-range desk chair, Gesture, in 2013, Steelcase observed 2,000 people in 11 countries. It noticed that new technologies were encouraging us to sit in new ways - twisting and squirming in our seats as we went.

Steelcase announced that it had discovered nine new postures - The Draw, The Multi-Device, The Text, The Cocoon, The Swipe, The Smart Lean, The Trance, The Take-It-In and The Strunch - around which it designed the Gesture chair. It encouraged movement and offered dynamic support. And, unlike Herman Miller's iconic Aeron, it was easy to adjust.

Steelcase's healthcare wing, Steelcase Health, conducted 18 studies and 15,000 hours of observation before designing a new model examination room and developing Empath, a heavy-duty adjustable lounge chair to replace the traditional table. Steelcase Education, the firm's education arm, studied 35 classrooms in 12 schools and colleges before developing Node, a laptop-friendly classroom chair on wheels, with built-in backpack storage. "What they are doing is a real step forward, to make the workplace more comfortable for everyone," says Susan Cain. "Being able to switch between private and social is good for all."

Cain got involved with Steelcase when its former CEO Jim Hackett saw her 2012 TED talk. "He told me he was an introvert and that he was increasingly concerned with the lack of privacy and space in offices," she says.

Cain claims one in three of us are introverts, distracted by the clamour of the open-plan office to the point of functional shut down. "I had spent six years working on the book," she says. "There is a lot of research out there, it just seemed no one had picked up on it."

Cain and Steelcase are working on introvert-friendly working retreats - largely soundproof, frosted-glass boxes called Susan Cain Quiet Spaces. "I just hit them with 15 principles," Cain says. "Things like the need for visual privacy, acoustic privacy, the use of natural materials."

Flow, Cain's favourite, is a small office with a built-in desk and wallpaper that suggests rows of books. There's a brainstorming room called Mind Share; decompression chambers, Be Me and Studio, where the less gregarious can escape; and the Green Room, an intimate hang-out space designed for two or three people to huddle on an L-shaped sofa.

Donna Flynn, VP of Steelcase WorkSpace Futures. She has previously been an anthropologist and a Microsoft UX manager

Cain's Quiet Spaces are not unlike the glass boxes offered to manage-ment and senior staff in many offices, though with more sophisticated environmental controls - and yoga mats as standard. "I was a corporate lawyer for seven years and I had my own office," Cain says. "But I was doing 16-hour days of pretty intense, complicated work. I needed that office. I've talked to designers who are re-imagining the office and to them, the private office is only about status. I think that's a real misunderstanding. People need them. The problem is the access and the expense."

Keane, a self-declared non-introvert, works from a number of Susan Cain Quiet Spaces, mostly an ever-so-slightly expanded version of Flow, which is still small in CEO terms. He also has a Green Room, which he imagined he would only employ for entertaining visitors, but now uses all the time.

He can control the colour, temperature and intensity of the light in these rooms and pick from a range of relaxing white noise. The key, insists Keane, is the control. "The point is that you are choosing. I'm not sure that these are the perfect settings, but they are my settings - not something decided by central facilities."

The Brody WorkLounge, with extras including a dash task light, full Privacy Lounge extension and a footstool

Crucially, adopting Steelcase's equipment and approach requires managers who will allow their workers to make those choices. And this, admits Keane, is the toughest part of the pitch. Beyond the spatial economics, the great advantage of open-plan offices is the ease with which workers are watched and surveyed. In most cases, Steelcase will spend time with a company before orders are taken. It will observe, analyse and interview and then make recommendations. And what it recommends is systemic change.

The Brody WorkLounge - launched in 2015 - is Steelcase's attempt to combine a psychological sense of privacy with ergonomics and practicality. Here's how its design evolved.

1. Initial sketchesBased on researching the study habits of students, designers sketched ideas.

2. Advanced sketchesOnce designers had decided on an "enclosed" idea for the chair, they explored useful features, such as a swivel base.

3. Refined renderingsCAD software let designers create detailed renderings, with elements such as textures and the Brody's modular form.

4. Production wireframeThis detailed 3D model shows the final Brody design, down to the re-arrangeable components. "People do realise that the model is broken; they get that. But then they ask, 'What is the new one thing that replaces the old one thing?' And we explain that there is no new one thing. You have to embrace the idea that you need a range of settings; that there are wild differences between people," Keane says. "By the time you get to lunch, they get that. They are fired up and energised. But then the natural forces of standardisation kick in again and they say, 'Oh, we could really only have one or two of the new things.' And, 'Well, perhaps some people can work the way they want to work but not my people.' The hardest part is asking organisations to lead in new ways. But eventually they get that as well. "And the thing is," Keane continues, "imagine if it were the other way around. What if we said we are going to make all offices the same? That would be a much tougher sell. It seems pretty obvious that to give people the choice to find their best way of working is better than making them work in an automaton way."

Steelcase's next big push, and an area that is energising Keane and Steelcase's vice president of global design, James Ludwig, is taking this smart office and connecting it to the internet of things. "For a long time we have predicted that technology would no longer simply be something we would carry around with us or would have on our desks; it would be in the environment," Keane explains. "It's happened in the car, and it's happening at home, so it's surprising how little it has happened in the workplace. And we can't think of any good reason for that, apart from the fact that the workplace has been stuck in the old model for so long."

Steelcase has been developing embedded sensor technology that will build a picture of personal preferences and choices so that, eventually, your environment will mould around you as you navigate the new ecosystem of spaces. The chair you sit on remembers the settings of the last chair you sat on, and adjusts itself around you.

At the NeoCon office equipment fair in Chicago in June 2015, Steelcase made its first moves in that direction. It introduced a version of Brody with a heated chair, speakers in the headrest and a red light activated by a sensor, signalling that the seat was occupied. It also launched a version of Gesture that monitors posture, sitting position, heart rate and stress levels. It showcased Media:scape Team Studio with VIA (Vertical Intelligent Architecture), a video-conferencing technology with a kind of shared virtual whiteboard, closing what it calls "the presence disparity gap".

Keane and Ludwig acknowledge that some might see all this tracking as an invasion of privacy. But, Keane says, that has often been that way with new technology. "Initially, new software might feel a little creepy, but with more use it seems perfectly normal. There are other technology/privacy issues that are just plain creepy." He suggests Steelcase's innovations are in the creepy-becomes-the-norm camp.

This kind of technology could become an everyman's automatic professional/personal/well-being PA. And for Keane it is all about reducing what he calls "cognitive overheads" - the bothers, annoyances and diversions that suck your creative energies.

Of course, you can argue that the crisis of the modern office goes way beyond rearranging the furniture. Saval has also spent time in Grand Rapids and credits Steelcase with making an "honest attempt" at increasing the greater good. But ultimately, he says: "How much you want to keep people in the office is a matter of how unhappy you want to make them."

Steelcase would insist that it is not encouraging a culture of free-snacks-and-foosball presenteeism. Quite the opposite: it is about your making the most of your strictly limited reserve of quality attention time while you are at work.

More fundamentally, though, Keane does believe that better space can make you happier, fitter and more productive. "Physical space can make you feel like you had a good day," he says, "that you made real progress."

Nick Compton wrote about Ron Arad's rules for innovation and creativity in 10.14

Photography by Brian Kelly

This article was originally published by WIRED UK