Early research into the changing workplace post-pandemic indicated a significant oversight in the offerings of the workplace to the employee. Working from home highlighted for many the shortcomings of the office environment and provided for them the opportunity to create their perfect workspace. Returning to the office was to be without these comforts in an impersonal environment.

My work from home setup heavily emphasizes atmosphere.

High employee independence, a changing workforce entering a new generation, and lessons learned from the prevalence of work-from-home highlighted an opportunity: to provide personalized value for the individual, similar to how they would have it at home: to erase the disadvantage coming to the office has for employees who want to focus. To provide a substantial reason to make the commute while enhancing the office’s strongest suit: its community.

Project team:

After months of research, industry conversations, and polling of focus groups, we identified a gap between employee expectations and employer offerings. Each seeks to benefit from one another and bridging the gap between the two could further enable them both.

Future research increased the scope of the problem to include far more than just the ‘new generation’ seen below. This initial analysis, however, provided us with a key insight:

The customer and the user are separate from one another.

Problems uncovered turned out to be universal, indiscriminate of age, generation, or occupation. We discovered instead that individuals across every demographic worked most efficiently in a wide range of environments. Office environments tended towards niche, alienating many who are either easily distracted or crave activity.

Someone’s ideal work atmosphere can be simplified into a measure of their response to their environment.

Those sensitive to unknown sights, sounds, or distractors are hypersensitive.

Those who require stimulation in the form of sights, sounds, and bustle are hyposensitive.

In a personal home environment, these factors are null.

However, evidence and polling suggested that individuals at the extremes of this spectrum found office environments highly distracting at best, and debilitating at worst, leaving upwards of 30% of any given workforce in an adversarial environment.

MeSpace’s goal is to provide a workspace that can adapt and enable the success of the entire workforce.

To have as large of an impact on the user as was necessary, I realized that we would need to completely control the user’s environmental experience. Our first concepts were focused on what kind of structure could be created with our manufacturing that could accommodate a person.

For the company, this was large step from a bench seat at the foot of a locker.