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Office Plans

I was inspired to do some research on what types of office plans were most popular among workers.  So I dived in and started looking and stumbled across an interesting failure in this area.  When a particular office plan was presented, it never included images of monitors.  This seems a somewhat shocking error considering that the average office worker will spend a fair amount of their time in front of screen. 

Consider this as an example: https://officesnapshots.com/articles/the-top-25-most-popular-offices-of-2018/.  In all 25 examples, the initial shot is of a common space.  I understand that a bit, it's easier to make these distinctive, the creativity of the designer is more unbounded.  But lets be honest, while these areas are useful to collaborative working, without a large screen and space for a keyboard and mouse, the personal ergonomics of them are not adequate for a lot of work.  Dig a little deeper and many of the deeper reviews don't feature a single shot of a personal workspace.  Like this one: https://officesnapshots.com/2018/10/22/uber-offices-perth/.

Do a google search on Most Popular Office Designs and you'll see something similar.  Very few monitors.   https://www.snacknation.com/blog/office-layout-ideas/, gives some thought to the actual workspace, but the ideas most focused on the actual workspace are around #14 an #15 in the list.

I get it. Monitors and keyboards are sort of boring, and if you're a designer looking to show your creative capacity, you probably wish you could just get rid of them.  But offices aren't primary role is as a place for work to get done.  So here is a challenge to designers, create a space that includes these elements that you can be proud of.  Hold each other accountable, and if designers don't show what a workspace with a monitor, keyboard and mouse looks like in their design, reject it as completely out of touch with the needs of workers.

And why should full size screens be relegated to only one type of workspace.. the desk?  Are there really no ideas on how to provide access to an important ergonomic feature like this outside of the classical desk? 




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