Home Office FurnitureFlujoNote: The Uniqueness of the Home Office.
One of the interesting things about homeworking from a design perspective is the unique nature of the ‘home office’. At ‘the office’ our environment is well planned out for us, by qualified professionals. Architects, designers and office planners, who design the working space. ‘Specifiers’, who provide products that meet the required criteria, such as health and safety. Productivity experts and life coaches, who look at our personal effectiveness. Process experts who look at our ‘workflow’. The IT department and consultants who deliver personal productivity and business applications. A whole range of expertise goes into this ‘office’ working environment which, ultimately, is defined by ‘what is best for the business’: sometimes this means ‘stylish, individual, creative, inspiring ’ and sometimes it doesn’t. As a complete contrast, ‘at home’ is about us. No one can tell us what to do in our own home (apart from our partner and kids, of course). Individuality, relaxation, freedom, switching off, style, personality, fun, entertainment etc are are how we usually describe this environment. So what happens when you try to combine ‘the office’ with ‘at home’? I think this is where it gets interesting. Often, when we work from home … there is no ‘expert’ to plan our working space and no consultant to advise on design, effectiveness or technology. The result is that: our working space can become ‘cobbled together’ based on how we feel at the time, piles of paper stack up across the floor, work spills over into our home time, and the ‘home office’ can look like it has been airlifted in from a cheap office and shoved into the smallest, darkest space in the house. A colleague of mine described the study as the ‘poor relative’ of the house. We spend ages thinking about our kitchen, bathroom and dining room – looks, function, space - but when it comes to the place where we might spend quite a lot of time … design principles often go out of the window. And that’s why we started Flujo. David Bridger Ps. I had a very entertaining discussion about this on Radio the other day with Joanne Mallon, who advises on work-life balance, as well as being a life and career coach. Joanne can help individuals to bridge gaps in our homeworking experience. David in his home office
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