May 10, 2025 • 18 mins
Ryan Anderson and his global research team are spread across more than 20 countries, allowing them to study a wide variety of built environments, workplaces, homes, schools, and healthcare, not just remotely, but in person. That in-person presence is critical. It gives them the ability to feel what’s happening in different types of spaces, each designed around distinct objectives.
Ryan also hosts one of the leading podcasts in the space, About Place—a true masterclass in all things design, workplace, and beyond. In fact, his podcast was one of my earliest and most valued resources as I dove into this community and topic.
So it was a real pleasure to sit down in person at Running Remote 2025 in Austin. Ryan shares how experience-based design isn't just about furniture or aesthetics, it's about creating environments that support engagement, autonomy, and wellbeing.
We explore the purpose behind workspace design, the data behind engaged teams, and the human factors that too often get overlooked. Ryan also talks about the role of choice and trust in workplace effectiveness, and why spaces that reflect organizational values are more important than ever.
Please join me in welcoming Ryan Anderson back to the Work 20XX podcast.
Recorded April 29, 2025 | Fair Market, Austin
Thanks to Liam Martin, Egor Borushko, Ana Maria Bennett & Team Running Remote
Ryan Anderson v2: Support Rich Interpersonal Interactions | Work 20XX podcast with Jeff Frick Ep41 from Running Remote
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WskmM6kJiKI&list=PLZURvMqWbYjmmJlwGj0L0jWbWdCej1Jlt
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I do like thatwe’re matching.
I do too. I do too.
Okay, so I will
count us down,and we will go
in three, two, one.
Hey, welcomeback everybody.
Jeff Frick here
coming to you from Austin.
I'm not in the home studio.
The Work 20XXis on the road.
We're here with our friendsat Running Remote in Austin.
Because people that run
(00:20):
all remote companiesare actually really good at things
that all business people should be good at,
from communication,managing objectives
a lot of good things.
So whether you're remote, hybrid, all in the office
or somewherein between.
There's a lot of great lessonsthat are coming out of this show
that you might want to pay closer attention to.
And I'm excitedto have my next guest,
one of the OGs,
of remote workand distributed work.
(00:42):
But it goesway before that
because he's at MillerKnoll,
and MillerKnoll and beforethat Herman Miller
and Knollseparately
have been involved in office design
and design around ergonomicsand people and homes
and everything elsefor a long time so
We're excited to welcome in
not through the magic of the internet,
but side by side
wearing a matching shirt,I love it.
He's Ryan Anderson, the VP GlobalResearch and Planning at MillerKnoll
(01:05):
Ryan, great tosee you
[Ryan] Hey my friend.[Jeff] as always.
It's so good to be here in person.
Thank you forhaving me.
Yeah. And, you're the road warrior.
I mean, you're like,everywhere all the time.
I keep an eye on you on LinkedIn and the man is.
The man is a traveling man.
Yes, we're a global team.
We look at the research.
Basically we're researching
how physical environmentscan make work better.
That’s home, that's office,
that schools, hospitals and beyond and so
(01:28):
when you research how physical environments affect people,
you got to get out of here.
Right
Out of your house
and go see these thingsand study them.
So yeah, we're all over.
We're a globally distributedteam of 25 in 21 cities.
So I've gotfolks all over.
So you practice what you preachis what you're saying.
Yeah. Exactly.
Right.
So one of Brian Elliot'sgreat lines
that he uses all the time is
distributed doesn't mean never together
(01:48):
remote doesn't mean never together.
And in fact,
you know Chase Warrington
at Doist they spend as much moneyon, on getting people together
as a lot of companyspend on real estate.
So it's important to get togetherand space is a big piece of that.
There was a really interesting thing I saw that
in one of your things it said
space created by thoughtful placement
of furniture and relationships
is what createsthis magical thing.
(02:10):
What is the role of spaceand how does it continue to evolve?
Yeah, well, I mean, let's first acknowledge that
there's all sorts of people,great thought leaders,
really the best experts on a remote work
are here physicallyin one location.
So there's clearly valuein being together
and spending quality timeface to face.
I think what we need to dois ask the question,
how do we achieve the best balance between
(02:32):
yes, achieving more work life balance personally,
but being part of a really good
high performance,high achieving team
and that requirestime together.
So we need to look at the roleof physical spaces.
It could be home workspace
for doing certain types of individual work.
It could be office design.
And we need to kind of
put aside our old likeidea of what an office
(02:52):
you know, wasor should be
and imagine itas something else.
And then there's all these other places in between
event spaces,flex spaces
that can servea big purpose.
And then ultimately,we can basically create
really good choices
for people that have more choice
over where they can work.
So they're not just working with whatever kind of
crappy conditions that might otherwise exist.
Right.
So you made an interesting comment.
(03:13):
You talked about,
one of the impacts of peoplebeing more remote and isolated,
are increased levels of burnout,
increased feelings of social isolation
loss of belonging.
There's a lot of negative things
if people are just isolatedby themselves all the time.
That's why solitary confinement
is the really the worst thingthat can happen to you in prison.
You talked about the office,
(03:35):
being the antidoteto ths negativity.
What have you could share you know
I think that's a different approachto what the office used to be.
It used just to be the place
you store the files and where the computers were.
If you're trying to actuallyuse it as a place
to counter some of these negative things,
that's a differentit's a different objective.
Yeah. It is, it's definitelya different perspective.
And I don't suggestthat old office design
(03:55):
can necessarily be that antidote.
So I think the culprit is probablytoo much screen time.
We could placeit on remote.
But I think the issue is that
most people are spending a huge percentage of their workday
physically isolatedfrom others,
spending huge amounts of timeinteracting through screens.
Which you're right,
burnout, social isolation,loss of psychological safety.
Like there's an imbalance occurring.
(04:17):
So our physical spacescan be a solution to this.
Although forcing someone to be at a particular desk
for 40 hoursa week
isn't exactly the remedy towardshaving somebody who doesn't feel
like they've got a high degreeof psychological safety.
So the goal basicallyis to design environments
that first and foremost
really support richinterpersonal interactions,
(04:37):
like the kinds of thingspeople love,
where you see someone and maybe you give them a hug,
or you just catch upand you begin to ask, like,
what are youworking on?
What's going on withyour parts of the company?
And you stitch together
an organizational networkthrough in-person time
and create that sense of connectedness
that just doesn't typically happen
when you're solely workingthrough a digital platform.
(04:59):
Right.
And are you seeing, you know, orI should say, how are you seeing
kind of the proportion of differenttypes of spaces say, within
not only an individual office,
but we're also seeing kind of this
thing where shared serviceswithin a shared building.
Yeah
that that can be usedby any of the tenants.
How is that kind of shifting around?
It's the biggestchange happening.
And a lot of organizations
haven't really gotten their head around it.
(05:19):
So there's still a role for desks,don't get me wrong.
And I think having a good placeto do it in particular,
focused, concentrated,asynchronous type work
like I need two hourswith a spreadsheet.
You still haveto do that,
but you need to be able,if you're going into an office
to then peel away from that
and spend other parts of your dayinteracting with people
in a way that's much more fluid.
So one of the biggest things we see is
(05:40):
people buildinginternal event spaces,
it's really tough to find a good third
You know, third partyevent space, the acoustics,
the ergonomic comfort,
the food, the lightingis often just junk.
And so we see organizationsdoing that within their facilities.
We see spaces like cafes, project rooms,
places where teams can go and make
a big productive mess fordays or weeks at a time.
(06:02):
And so yeah, it's justlike a different allocation.
If your view of the office is rows and rows of open desks,
private offices and conference rooms,
that was, as you point out,designed primarily in an era
where offices were about supervising work
and expressing status
like that's not the vibe anymore.
The vibe is like,
what do you do tobring people together
to be productive in ways together
(06:23):
that they can't be doingwhile working apart?
Right.
And we've hadof course, thousands really
of customers make improvementsthat are really meaningful.
And that's kind ofwhat we know about.
Yeah.
It's interesting. Right.
Because the institutional offsitehas always been there.
Right.
We really need to get something important done.
We're going to bring everybodytogether with intention.
We have specific objectives.
(06:44):
And we're going to go to a resort
or a nice conference hotel that hasall these hospitality services.
So I love this kind of concept,
where onsite now is the new offsite
in terms of intention,in terms of variety of activities,
in terms of really youjust mentioned a bunch
of these kind of hospitality,like types of amenities
that really make that whole thing come together.
(07:05):
That's exactlywhat's happening.
So like the idea of an offsiteat a hotel or resort is great
because the pools are awesome,the bar is awesome.
And then you get in this roomwith crappy lighting
and these fake bamboo lookingchairs and everyone's like, crap,
what are we going to be doingfor the next, you know, three days?
But, we've had organizationswhere maybe they've
adopted a hybrid policy.
They're seeing fewer peoplein the office on a given day,
but they take someof that space
(07:25):
and they turn it into an internal events workshop type space,
like good ergonomic furnishings,
good natural lights,good supportive technology
and say to everyone like,you can book this for days,
or in some cases,even weeks on end.
It becomes a magnetfor those that are working locally.
It's cool to see who'scoming into town,
but also it's just, a clear alternative
(07:47):
to the sort of workyou can do from a spare bedroom.
Or, like I said, a hotel.
Right, right.
So another topic that
that furniture and office design deeply interacts with is technology.
And last time we talked years ago, you know,
we talked about how unfortunately,
it ended up that your guy's jobwas really just to hide the cables
that ran the power dropsand then ran the Ethernet cable.
(08:09):
And as you said,I think
we put the chairs inat the end, you know,
that’s wherethe people go
and then the peoplein after that.
Exactly.
Technology's continuingto evolve, right?
There's a lot of opportunitynow inside of spaces
to use them more effectively,more efficiently.
There's all kinds of sensors and
there's like this whole new era
of technology outsideof just connecting
the laptop to the Ethernet.
(08:29):
I wonder if you can speak to
what are some of these cool things,and how are people using them
to get more ROI
on their investmentin these nice spaces?
First we shouldjust note that
the technology used to be resident,
it used to live in the space,
and so theoffice design
was often there to support I.T. networks
in ways that maybewere more important
than human networks.
Our technology today is mobile.
(08:50):
It's in our pockets, purse, and backpacks.
And there isn't necessarilya single technology
that brings people into an office anymore.
So it starts with
let's figure out how to support what people bring in.
Let's do the reallytough work of
trying to figure out how people
that are doing thingslike taking video calls
and using productslike Miro or Mural,
can do so in a shared environment
so that it's naturaland not awkward,
(09:12):
and you don'tget the weird feedback
from the mic’sand that sort of thing.
But there's alsothis other side,
which is the buildings themselves
are getting moretechnologically advanced,
where they're more aware of the use patterns.
They can save energy,
they can provide things toimprove the overall experience.
I think one, evidentuse of this is basically,
what are known as user experience apps
(09:33):
or tenant experience apps.
Places like Australia havewidely adopted this so that
it's kind of an app foryour work experience.
You know, it's going to tell you what’s in the cafe
it's going to tell you if there's a fitness class,
it's going to maybe help you reserve a parking spot
if you don't have one.
These are simple conveniencesjust to make life a little better.
But I will say that despite all that,
I still think the primary goal of the office
(09:54):
is allowing people to have face to face time
where, yes, you might be using technology,
or in some instances,it might even encourage you
to put the technology away for 20 minutes.
And that's something thatmost people are seeking.
I don't want to soundlike a Luddite,
but we don't want to exist that way solely.
But we don't necessarilywant a space
to ever be designedaround the tech.
(10:14):
Right
It's always got to be designed around
the interpersonal interactionaround the people.
So you've got a great perspective
because as you said,
you got a team of 25spread out in 21 cities.
You travel all around the world and,
and you’ve expressed before
that the geographic differences are real.
So I wonder, you know,it's been five years since Covid.
It's been, you know, like 2 or 3 since the vaccines
(10:35):
and everyone's kind of started
getting back to normalcy,whatever that means.
What are some of the differencesyou see in different geos?
In terms ofwhere we are
in terms of the evolution
I don't want to say RTO,but the evolution
Yeah
of office and space,
Oh, it's so much more diversified
and so muchmore interesting
than the headlines make it out to me.
We find that
there's a few things that affect the use of offices
(10:59):
and just the conceptualization of offices
that are very difficultfor people to understand.
One is justthe local culture.
So as an example,
you know, in Paris, you don't really eat lunch from your desk
like you go and you eat lunch together.
So it didn't takea lot of encouragement
to get people to come and,and spend time together.
We're in Austin.
Austin actually had surprisingly good return to office rates
(11:20):
compared tomost cities,
because a lot of organizations
had adopted some degreeof flexible working
pre-pandemic and so
it wasn't like there was this big struggle
or debate as much like people understood,
there's just good timesto be together.
[Jeff] Right.
And I'll say, even downto like a city block,
if you find neighborhoods
that are more vibrant,there's more culture.
You tend to find offices that aremuch more vibrant and active,
(11:44):
and then you've got these placesthat are just traditional,
like built for commerce,very little culture, sort of
older environments where it's class B, class C, real estate.
Those are the spacesthat are struggling
where you read about all the vacancy rates.
But for my team specifically,
we're really fortunatebecause we've got
We're part ofan organization
that effectively supportsworking from home,
but we've also got local officesor local dealer partners.
(12:06):
I'm here with somebody from SKG
our local dealer in Austin, so our team members
always have the chanceto go someplace
and spend qualitytime with others,
even though they'redistributed all over
For me,that's important.
I don't want to deny anybody that opportunity.
Right, right.
It's honey versus vinegar, right?
I mean, there's reasons there's
there's certain thingsyou just can't do at home
or you don't want to do at home,
(12:27):
where it's a muchbetter opportunity
to do it at the office.
Yeah, exactly.
If it's a well-designed office,
if it's well-designed.
Okay, so your research,
What are you working on? Any cool research things
Oh man
we should be keepingour eyes out for?
Oh, man. So, I mean so much.
This is whatgets me going.
We've got researchgoing around
what's happening with offices,schools, homes, hospitals.
There's some really,interesting things
(12:48):
that we've recently completed.
A lot of it has to do with how
the design of a space canactually impact relationships
within an organization betweenmanagers, managers and employees.
Even, the kind of connection thatpeople have with the place itself,
which is called place attachment.
Like if you sitin the same chair
at the dining room tableeach night, that's
an example of place attachment.
(13:08):
But we're takingit even farther.
We've been doing research for more
than a decade aroundinclusive design,
looking at a widevariety of groups.
It could be veterans,it could be, working parents.
Recently we've been workingwith women in menopause
and perimenopause,asking the question,
how can these physical environmentsmake your work experience better?
And then if we get really down the path,
I'm going, like,deep cut for you
(13:29):
Yeah.
We've been diving into it,something called neuroaesthetics
which is looking at basically
how the esthetic things,the elements around us
impact how we think, feeland the decisions that we make.
We're doing this witha group at Johns Hopkins.
And so this is probably down the path,
but we'd like to be ableto get to the point
where we have a very clearunderstanding of how
these environmentsaffect our relationships,
(13:50):
our sense of belonging,
and even howwe make decisions
and how we feel.
So it's a whole different levelthan just activity based, design.
Yeah, actually, in some ways,I think activity based work.
So that's the idea that you'redesigning a space
based on the type of activitythat can happen there.
It's useful. It's been around for 40 years.
The challenge is and this is what we're talking about
most of these activities,
(14:11):
if it's using a device or it's having a meeting,
can happenalmost anywhere.
[Jeff] Right.
And so it's a little bittougher to use activity based,
strategies to inform design.
You got to get a little bitlayered deeper.
How does it affect the ways thatwe're interacting with each other?
How does it affect the wayI think about myself,
my employer and my work?
And even how does the space itselfhelp me to make better decisions?
(14:31):
So that's kind of where things are going.
I love that.
So I just want to let you knowI have about, three monitors.
I probably have about 15 or 20 kindof semi-permanent post-it notes.
Yeah.
One of them,
right on the top of my main monitor, says
Inclusive Design.
[Ryan] Does it? [Jeff] I mean
it is such a powerful concept.
You design for the people
with the biggest challengesand everybody benefits.
It seems so drop dead simple.
(14:54):
It is.
What youfind is that
if you start looking at different groups
and what they need,you'll see patterns.
So as an example, we mentioned
there's a high degree of anxiety,
social burnout or excuse me,burnout, social isolation.
But there'salso like
a lot of other stuff going onin terms of what
might causesomeone
to feel a very high degreeof stress throughout the workday.
So the addition, as an example
(15:15):
of a wellbeing space
in a discrete location
that you communicate to everyone,
hey, we know work is stressful.
This is a place for youto kind of unwind.
It can help somebody on the autism spectrum
who's got sensoryoverload.
It can help somebodywho's experiencing,
the brain fog of menopause.
It can help a veteranwho's dealing with PTSD.
It can help somebody who'sjust having a really crappy day.
(15:36):
And sothe idea is,
the more you work with different groups,
you see these patterns,
and you can solve for a much broader array of needs
with an investmentin one space
Right
than trying to do somethingseparate for everyone.
It's great that we have prayer rooms
and nursing rooms,but what happens
if we land on a room designthat can help everyone?
That's kind of the goal.
There's an efficiencyto it as well.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
(15:56):
I say Kay Sargent from HOK speak recently,
and she was talking about neurodivergent design
She has a new book out.
And what she said toa lot of times,
like the neurodivergent people aremaybe a canary in the coal mine
in that the stuff that irritates them
actually irritates everybody.
But maybe everyone elseisn't quite so sensitive.
So in in taking care of that,
(16:16):
that irritant,
you're actually taking careof that irritant for everybody.
Yeah. I'll giveyou an example.
In September, I wasin Melbourne at,
the largest company in Australia.
They've hired about 32 people with autism
to join their cybersecurity team.
They're excellent at seeing anomalies and patterns
like pattern recognitionis a real gift for them.
But sensory controlis really important.
(16:38):
So they designed a wing of one of their floors that allows
more control overthe intensity of lighting,
more controlover acoustics,
more controlover visual privacy,
and the biggest problem they had
is keeping the people in the rest of the building
from going and using it,
because who doesn'twant that?
And so
they ended up building drywalland putting on like security locks.
(16:58):
But the message for the whole,like the whole community there is
you cando more.
Maybe each person can’tadjust their levels of lighting.
But if we're talking about these new work strategies,
can you offerdifferent spaces
with different levelsof acoustics or lighting?
Yeah,you can.
[Jeff] Right
And so choice might be workfrom home or work from the office,
but it might be workfrom six different,
very distinctly differentenvironments in the office.
(17:21):
By doing that, you're only increasing the chance
that somebody will be productive
and accomplish morefor the organization.
It's funny, Kate Lister recentlywas talking about the old
the old experiment where they just
put the thermostat on the wall
that wasn't necessarilyconnected anything in the office
but people felt a lot better
if they could at least go upand turn the dial a little bit.
Yeah, it's called the Hawthorne effect.
It's true
(17:41):
Not to be discounted, though.
Yeah.
All right.Well Ryan
as you can tell Ryanhas so much information.
We don't have time hereto get into it all,
but check out his podcast
‘About Place’ podcast.
He's been doingit for years.
He has a lot of great guests and
and the guy is smooth on the mic.
You got to admit.
Thank you, my friend
Ryan is greatto see you.
I appreciate you.
Alright, He’s RyanI’m Jeff
You're watching Work 20XXlive from Austin at Running Remote.
(18:05):
Thanks forwatching.
Thanks for listening on the podcast.
Catch you next time. Take care.
You made that so easy
piece of cake.
Piece of cake.
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
And that also has links to the videos as well.
(18:26):
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
I do like thatwe’re matching.
I do too. I do too.
Okay, so I will
count us down,and we will go
in three, two, one.
Hey, welcomeback everybody.
Jeff Frick here
coming to you from Austin.
I'm not in the home studio.
The Work 20XXis on the road.
We're here with our friendsat Running Remote in Austin.
Because people that run
(00:20):
all remote companiesare actually really good at things
that all business people should be good at,
from communication,managing objectives
a lot of good things.
So whether you're remote, hybrid, all in the office
or somewherein between.
There's a lot of great lessonsthat are coming out of this show
that you might want to pay closer attention to.
And I'm excitedto have my next guest,
one of the OGs,
of remote workand distributed work.
(00:42):
But it goesway before that
because he's at MillerKnoll,
and MillerKnoll and beforethat Herman Miller
and Knollseparately
have been involved in office design
and design around ergonomicsand people and homes
and everything elsefor a long time so
We're excited to welcome in
not through the magic of the internet,
but side by side
wearing a matching shirt,I love it.
He's Ryan Anderson, the VP GlobalResearch and Planning at MillerKnoll
(01:05):
Ryan, great tosee you
[Ryan] Hey my friend.[Jeff] as always.
It's so good to be here in person.
Thank you forhaving me.
Yeah. And, you're the road warrior.
I mean, you're like,everywhere all the time.
I keep an eye on you on LinkedIn and the man is.
The man is a traveling man.
Yes, we're a global team.
We look at the research.
Basically we're researching
how physical environmentscan make work better.
That’s home, that's office,
that schools, hospitals and beyond and so
(01:28):
when you research how physical environments affect people,
you got to get out of here.
Right
Out of your house
and go see these thingsand study them.
So yeah, we're all over.
We're a globally distributedteam of 25 in 21 cities.
So I've gotfolks all over.
So you practice what you preachis what you're saying.
Yeah. Exactly.
Right.
So one of Brian Elliot'sgreat lines
that he uses all the time is
distributed doesn't mean never together
(01:48):
remote doesn't mean never together.
And in fact,
you know Chase Warrington
at Doist they spend as much moneyon, on getting people together
as a lot of companyspend on real estate.
So it's important to get togetherand space is a big piece of that.
There was a really interesting thing I saw that
in one of your things it said
space created by thoughtful placement
of furniture and relationships
is what createsthis magical thing.
(02:10):
What is the role of spaceand how does it continue to evolve?
Yeah, well, I mean, let's first acknowledge that
there's all sorts of people,great thought leaders,
really the best experts on a remote work
are here physicallyin one location.
So there's clearly valuein being together
and spending quality timeface to face.
I think what we need to dois ask the question,
how do we achieve the best balance between
(02:32):
yes, achieving more work life balance personally,
but being part of a really good
high performance,high achieving team
and that requirestime together.
So we need to look at the roleof physical spaces.
It could be home workspace
for doing certain types of individual work.
It could be office design.
And we need to kind of
put aside our old likeidea of what an office
(02:52):
you know, wasor should be
and imagine itas something else.
And then there's all these other places in between
event spaces,flex spaces
that can servea big purpose.
And then ultimately,we can basically create
really good choices
for people that have more choice
over where they can work.
So they're not just working with whatever kind of
crappy conditions that might otherwise exist.
Right.
So you made an interesting comment.
(03:13):
You talked about,
one of the impacts of peoplebeing more remote and isolated,
are increased levels of burnout,
increased feelings of social isolation
loss of belonging.
There's a lot of negative things
if people are just isolatedby themselves all the time.
That's why solitary confinement
is the really the worst thingthat can happen to you in prison.
You talked about the office,
(03:35):
being the antidoteto ths negativity.
What have you could share you know
I think that's a different approachto what the office used to be.
It used just to be the place
you store the files and where the computers were.
If you're trying to actuallyuse it as a place
to counter some of these negative things,
that's a differentit's a different objective.
Yeah. It is, it's definitelya different perspective.
And I don't suggestthat old office design
(03:55):
can necessarily be that antidote.
So I think the culprit is probablytoo much screen time.
We could placeit on remote.
But I think the issue is that
most people are spending a huge percentage of their workday
physically isolatedfrom others,
spending huge amounts of timeinteracting through screens.
Which you're right,
burnout, social isolation,loss of psychological safety.
Like there's an imbalance occurring.
(04:17):
So our physical spacescan be a solution to this.
Although forcing someone to be at a particular desk
for 40 hoursa week
isn't exactly the remedy towardshaving somebody who doesn't feel
like they've got a high degreeof psychological safety.
So the goal basicallyis to design environments
that first and foremost
really support richinterpersonal interactions,
(04:37):
like the kinds of thingspeople love,
where you see someone and maybe you give them a hug,
or you just catch upand you begin to ask, like,
what are youworking on?
What's going on withyour parts of the company?
And you stitch together
an organizational networkthrough in-person time
and create that sense of connectedness
that just doesn't typically happen
when you're solely workingthrough a digital platform.
(04:59):
Right.
And are you seeing, you know, orI should say, how are you seeing
kind of the proportion of differenttypes of spaces say, within
not only an individual office,
but we're also seeing kind of this
thing where shared serviceswithin a shared building.
Yeah
that that can be usedby any of the tenants.
How is that kind of shifting around?
It's the biggestchange happening.
And a lot of organizations
haven't really gotten their head around it.
(05:19):
So there's still a role for desks,don't get me wrong.
And I think having a good placeto do it in particular,
focused, concentrated,asynchronous type work
like I need two hourswith a spreadsheet.
You still haveto do that,
but you need to be able,if you're going into an office
to then peel away from that
and spend other parts of your dayinteracting with people
in a way that's much more fluid.
So one of the biggest things we see is
(05:40):
people buildinginternal event spaces,
it's really tough to find a good third
You know, third partyevent space, the acoustics,
the ergonomic comfort,
the food, the lightingis often just junk.
And so we see organizationsdoing that within their facilities.
We see spaces like cafes, project rooms,
places where teams can go and make
a big productive mess fordays or weeks at a time.
(06:02):
And so yeah, it's justlike a different allocation.
If your view of the office is rows and rows of open desks,
private offices and conference rooms,
that was, as you point out,designed primarily in an era
where offices were about supervising work
and expressing status
like that's not the vibe anymore.
The vibe is like,
what do you do tobring people together
to be productive in ways together
(06:23):
that they can't be doingwhile working apart?
Right.
And we've hadof course, thousands really
of customers make improvementsthat are really meaningful.
And that's kind ofwhat we know about.
Yeah.
It's interesting. Right.
Because the institutional offsitehas always been there.
Right.
We really need to get something important done.
We're going to bring everybodytogether with intention.
We have specific objectives.
(06:44):
And we're going to go to a resort
or a nice conference hotel that hasall these hospitality services.
So I love this kind of concept,
where onsite now is the new offsite
in terms of intention,in terms of variety of activities,
in terms of really youjust mentioned a bunch
of these kind of hospitality,like types of amenities
that really make that whole thing come together.
(07:05):
That's exactlywhat's happening.
So like the idea of an offsiteat a hotel or resort is great
because the pools are awesome,the bar is awesome.
And then you get in this roomwith crappy lighting
and these fake bamboo lookingchairs and everyone's like, crap,
what are we going to be doingfor the next, you know, three days?
But, we've had organizationswhere maybe they've
adopted a hybrid policy.
They're seeing fewer peoplein the office on a given day,
but they take someof that space
(07:25):
and they turn it into an internal events workshop type space,
like good ergonomic furnishings,
good natural lights,good supportive technology
and say to everyone like,you can book this for days,
or in some cases,even weeks on end.
It becomes a magnetfor those that are working locally.
It's cool to see who'scoming into town,
but also it's just, a clear alternative
(07:47):
to the sort of workyou can do from a spare bedroom.
Or, like I said, a hotel.
Right, right.
So another topic that
that furniture and office design deeply interacts with is technology.
And last time we talked years ago, you know,
we talked about how unfortunately,
it ended up that your guy's jobwas really just to hide the cables
that ran the power dropsand then ran the Ethernet cable.
(08:09):
And as you said,I think
we put the chairs inat the end, you know,
that’s wherethe people go
and then the peoplein after that.
Exactly.
Technology's continuingto evolve, right?
There's a lot of opportunitynow inside of spaces
to use them more effectively,more efficiently.
There's all kinds of sensors and
there's like this whole new era
of technology outsideof just connecting
the laptop to the Ethernet.
(08:29):
I wonder if you can speak to
what are some of these cool things,and how are people using them
to get more ROI
on their investmentin these nice spaces?
First we shouldjust note that
the technology used to be resident,
it used to live in the space,
and so theoffice design
was often there to support I.T. networks
in ways that maybewere more important
than human networks.
Our technology today is mobile.
(08:50):
It's in our pockets, purse, and backpacks.
And there isn't necessarilya single technology
that brings people into an office anymore.
So it starts with
let's figure out how to support what people bring in.
Let's do the reallytough work of
trying to figure out how people
that are doing thingslike taking video calls
and using productslike Miro or Mural,
can do so in a shared environment
so that it's naturaland not awkward,
(09:12):
and you don'tget the weird feedback
from the mic’sand that sort of thing.
But there's alsothis other side,
which is the buildings themselves
are getting moretechnologically advanced,
where they're more aware of the use patterns.
They can save energy,
they can provide things toimprove the overall experience.
I think one, evidentuse of this is basically,
what are known as user experience apps
(09:33):
or tenant experience apps.
Places like Australia havewidely adopted this so that
it's kind of an app foryour work experience.
You know, it's going to tell you what’s in the cafe
it's going to tell you if there's a fitness class,
it's going to maybe help you reserve a parking spot
if you don't have one.
These are simple conveniencesjust to make life a little better.
But I will say that despite all that,
I still think the primary goal of the office
(09:54):
is allowing people to have face to face time
where, yes, you might be using technology,
or in some instances,it might even encourage you
to put the technology away for 20 minutes.
And that's something thatmost people are seeking.
I don't want to soundlike a Luddite,
but we don't want to exist that way solely.
But we don't necessarilywant a space
to ever be designedaround the tech.
(10:14):
Right
It's always got to be designed around
the interpersonal interactionaround the people.
So you've got a great perspective
because as you said,
you got a team of 25spread out in 21 cities.
You travel all around the world and,
and you’ve expressed before
that the geographic differences are real.
So I wonder, you know,it's been five years since Covid.
It's been, you know, like 2 or 3 since the vaccines
(10:35):
and everyone's kind of started
getting back to normalcy,whatever that means.
What are some of the differencesyou see in different geos?
In terms ofwhere we are
in terms of the evolution
I don't want to say RTO,but the evolution
Yeah
of office and space,
Oh, it's so much more diversified
and so muchmore interesting
than the headlines make it out to me.
We find that
there's a few things that affect the use of offices
(10:59):
and just the conceptualization of offices
that are very difficultfor people to understand.
One is justthe local culture.
So as an example,
you know, in Paris, you don't really eat lunch from your desk
like you go and you eat lunch together.
So it didn't takea lot of encouragement
to get people to come and,and spend time together.
We're in Austin.
Austin actually had surprisingly good return to office rates
(11:20):
compared tomost cities,
because a lot of organizations
had adopted some degreeof flexible working
pre-pandemic and so
it wasn't like there was this big struggle
or debate as much like people understood,
there's just good timesto be together.
[Jeff] Right.
And I'll say, even downto like a city block,
if you find neighborhoods
that are more vibrant,there's more culture.
You tend to find offices that aremuch more vibrant and active,
(11:44):
and then you've got these placesthat are just traditional,
like built for commerce,very little culture, sort of
older environments where it's class B, class C, real estate.
Those are the spacesthat are struggling
where you read about all the vacancy rates.
But for my team specifically,
we're really fortunatebecause we've got
We're part ofan organization
that effectively supportsworking from home,
but we've also got local officesor local dealer partners.
(12:06):
I'm here with somebody from SKG
our local dealer in Austin, so our team members
always have the chanceto go someplace
and spend qualitytime with others,
even though they'redistributed all over
For me,that's important.
I don't want to deny anybody that opportunity.
Right, right.
It's honey versus vinegar, right?
I mean, there's reasons there's
there's certain thingsyou just can't do at home
or you don't want to do at home,
(12:27):
where it's a muchbetter opportunity
to do it at the office.
Yeah, exactly.
If it's a well-designed office,
if it's well-designed.
Okay, so your research,
What are you working on? Any cool research things
Oh man
we should be keepingour eyes out for?
Oh, man. So, I mean so much.
This is whatgets me going.
We've got researchgoing around
what's happening with offices,schools, homes, hospitals.
There's some really,interesting things
(12:48):
that we've recently completed.
A lot of it has to do with how
the design of a space canactually impact relationships
within an organization betweenmanagers, managers and employees.
Even, the kind of connection thatpeople have with the place itself,
which is called place attachment.
Like if you sitin the same chair
at the dining room tableeach night, that's
an example of place attachment.
(13:08):
But we're takingit even farther.
We've been doing research for more
than a decade aroundinclusive design,
looking at a widevariety of groups.
It could be veterans,it could be, working parents.
Recently we've been workingwith women in menopause
and perimenopause,asking the question,
how can these physical environmentsmake your work experience better?
And then if we get really down the path,
I'm going, like,deep cut for you
(13:29):
Yeah.
We've been diving into it,something called neuroaesthetics
which is looking at basically
how the esthetic things,the elements around us
impact how we think, feeland the decisions that we make.
We're doing this witha group at Johns Hopkins.
And so this is probably down the path,
but we'd like to be ableto get to the point
where we have a very clearunderstanding of how
these environmentsaffect our relationships,
(13:50):
our sense of belonging,
and even howwe make decisions
and how we feel.
So it's a whole different levelthan just activity based, design.
Yeah, actually, in some ways,I think activity based work.
So that's the idea that you'redesigning a space
based on the type of activitythat can happen there.
It's useful. It's been around for 40 years.
The challenge is and this is what we're talking about
most of these activities,
(14:11):
if it's using a device or it's having a meeting,
can happenalmost anywhere.
[Jeff] Right.
And so it's a little bittougher to use activity based,
strategies to inform design.
You got to get a little bitlayered deeper.
How does it affect the ways thatwe're interacting with each other?
How does it affect the wayI think about myself,
my employer and my work?
And even how does the space itselfhelp me to make better decisions?
(14:31):
So that's kind of where things are going.
I love that.
So I just want to let you knowI have about, three monitors.
I probably have about 15 or 20 kindof semi-permanent post-it notes.
Yeah.
One of them,
right on the top of my main monitor, says
Inclusive Design.
[Ryan] Does it? [Jeff] I mean
it is such a powerful concept.
You design for the people
with the biggest challengesand everybody benefits.
It seems so drop dead simple.
(14:54):
It is.
What youfind is that
if you start looking at different groups
and what they need,you'll see patterns.
So as an example, we mentioned
there's a high degree of anxiety,
social burnout or excuse me,burnout, social isolation.
But there'salso like
a lot of other stuff going onin terms of what
might causesomeone
to feel a very high degreeof stress throughout the workday.
So the addition, as an example
(15:15):
of a wellbeing space
in a discrete location
that you communicate to everyone,
hey, we know work is stressful.
This is a place for youto kind of unwind.
It can help somebody on the autism spectrum
who's got sensoryoverload.
It can help somebodywho's experiencing,
the brain fog of menopause.
It can help a veteranwho's dealing with PTSD.
It can help somebody who'sjust having a really crappy day.
(15:36):
And sothe idea is,
the more you work with different groups,
you see these patterns,
and you can solve for a much broader array of needs
with an investmentin one space
Right
than trying to do somethingseparate for everyone.
It's great that we have prayer rooms
and nursing rooms,but what happens
if we land on a room designthat can help everyone?
That's kind of the goal.
There's an efficiencyto it as well.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
(15:56):
I say Kay Sargent from HOK speak recently,
and she was talking about neurodivergent design
She has a new book out.
And what she said toa lot of times,
like the neurodivergent people aremaybe a canary in the coal mine
in that the stuff that irritates them
actually irritates everybody.
But maybe everyone elseisn't quite so sensitive.
So in in taking care of that,
(16:16):
that irritant,
you're actually taking careof that irritant for everybody.
Yeah. I'll giveyou an example.
In September, I wasin Melbourne at,
the largest company in Australia.
They've hired about 32 people with autism
to join their cybersecurity team.
They're excellent at seeing anomalies and patterns
like pattern recognitionis a real gift for them.
But sensory controlis really important.
(16:38):
So they designed a wing of one of their floors that allows
more control overthe intensity of lighting,
more controlover acoustics,
more controlover visual privacy,
and the biggest problem they had
is keeping the people in the rest of the building
from going and using it,
because who doesn'twant that?
And so
they ended up building drywalland putting on like security locks.
(16:58):
But the message for the whole,like the whole community there is
you cando more.
Maybe each person can’tadjust their levels of lighting.
But if we're talking about these new work strategies,
can you offerdifferent spaces
with different levelsof acoustics or lighting?
Yeah,you can.
[Jeff] Right
And so choice might be workfrom home or work from the office,
but it might be workfrom six different,
very distinctly differentenvironments in the office.
(17:21):
By doing that, you're only increasing the chance
that somebody will be productive
and accomplish morefor the organization.
It's funny, Kate Lister recentlywas talking about the old
the old experiment where they just
put the thermostat on the wall
that wasn't necessarilyconnected anything in the office
but people felt a lot better
if they could at least go upand turn the dial a little bit.
Yeah, it's called the Hawthorne effect.
It's true
(17:41):
Not to be discounted, though.
Yeah.
All right.Well Ryan
as you can tell Ryanhas so much information.
We don't have time hereto get into it all,
but check out his podcast
‘About Place’ podcast.
He's been doingit for years.
He has a lot of great guests and
and the guy is smooth on the mic.
You got to admit.
Thank you, my friend
Ryan is greatto see you.
I appreciate you.
Alright, He’s RyanI’m Jeff
You're watching Work 20XXlive from Austin at Running Remote.
(18:05):
Thanks forwatching.
Thanks for listening on the podcast.
Catch you next time. Take care.
You made that so easy
piece of cake.
Piece of cake.
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
And that also has links to the videos as well.
(18:26):
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
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