First of all, I was struggling to use the word ‘design’ in the title, because I think it is an insult to all the brilliant architects out there. But I couldn’t find a better one so, sorry… office design it is.
I have written a bunch of stuff about home-offices in the past, most of them during the process of building my current workplace. During this period, I realized that most principles I applied actually work also for all other kinds of offices as well. So I decided to drop the ‘home’ part this time if you wish. Let’s talk a bit about how to create a good workplace then. A word of warning: this is a very long post.
Physical space
An office should have enough room so that you don’t feel cramped and can do your work comfortably. In other words, you can be as productive in a 50 square feet office as you would in a 500 square feet one, assuming that 50 is enough — if you are building trebuchets, then it isn’t. Got the point? For me, since I just need computers, a small room is enough. As you can see in the photos above and below, it is very small. Just enough room for a desk, a bookshelf and a whiteboard.
Light
When it comes to office design, an important point is sunlight. Human beings react better to natural light than fluorescent lamps, so a windowed room is necessary. If you have a nice view, even better. Windowed rooms also feel more comfy and less claustrophobic. Having a window makes the work environment better overall. If you think that this natural light talk is nonsense, please spend all winter in northern Finland and try to come back without being depressed.
Controlling natural light is also something to have in mind. In my case, the sun rises right in front of the window, so I need blinders to be able to work in the morning.
Artificial light should be chosen as both complementary to natural light, and to properly light the environment when it is dark — because during the day, you have a window, right? If possible, create two lighting schemes, a lighter one for the complementary light and another for darkness. This will save energy and make the environment more comfortable.
Noise
Going straight to the point: noise kills productivity. It is distracting, annoying and bad for your health. Corollary: your office should be contained in its own room. This seems to be where corporate office planners fail. I bet over 90% of the corporate offices worldwide are noisy, Dilbert-like cubicle sets. I have a tip for them: there is a new piece of innovation… how’s it called…ah, the wall… which allows us to physically separate areas inside a building. You can even attach a movable part to it, called a door, so people can get in or out. Of course, this costs money. But I bet in the long run it is less than the waste produced by low productivity.
My office is a small room, with a door and a window. So it is quiet enough when I close the door. As an extra bonus, I added a piece of carpet to reduce sound reverberation and quiet it a bit more. This is especially important when my big Windows PC is on.
Furniture
I am an advocate of straight desks, since you get plenty of space and more mobility. I particularly hate L-shaped desks because you always end up with a dead corner. In my case, I had no choice, since this was the only way of having 3 monitors and a multifunction printer/scanner on the desk due to my limited space. I sort of managed the dead corner issue in my office by making it the living place for my external hard-drives. There are only two for now, but as my storage needs grow, I’ll add more and they will live comfortably in that dead space.
Another important piece of furniture is a proper chair. I’ll be blunt — get a Herman-Miller Aeron, period. They last over 10 years, require minimum maintenance and are extremely comfortable. My current leather chair is at the end of its life after almost 10 years and I’ll get one of those to replace it. Don’t save money on the chair, since it is the most important piece of your office. Bad chairs break down (cost $$ to replace) and will break your spine over the years.
As for accessory furniture, I usually recommend a bookshelf and a drawer rack with a suspension file archive (to store all that paper you need to keep for bureaucracy’s sake). And anything eles you need to get your work done. Just don’t clog up your office — keep it simple. If it is not necessary, then it shouldn’t be there.
Gadgetry
Ok, now the part where most people get things wrong — hardware and software. Actually, people can screw up here way worse than the office floor planners I mentioned before. They waste money in useless things, save money when they shouldn’t and don’t plan ahead. There are 3 important points to consider here:
- Gadgets must help you get your things done. This is true for both work and entertainment.
- Gadgets should not steal too much of your time. You are not paid to be the IT admin for yourself.
- Gadgets should be energy-efficient. Do it for the environment or for your own money’s sake, whatever. But have this in mind.
The lessons for number 1 are: don’t buy things you don’t need, don’t save money on things that will slow your pace (corollary: buy the best tools money can buy to get your things done — and just that). Need mobility, get a fast and portable laptop; need a big monitor, get a decent IPS panel; you print a lot of docs? No problem, get a fast laser printer. And so on. Productivity has a significant startup cost, but those are diluted in the long run. That is why you shouldn’t buy things you don’t need, so you can save the big bucks for the important stuff.
Number 2 should have been something that isn’t worth mentioning because it is obvious. But since the vast majority of current product designs out there are just too screwed up, we need to remind people that they really aren’t supposed to be tweaking and hacking their stuff in order to make them work. To me, a product that requires mandatory configuration for it to work is defective by design. Think about a car (a simple one, not one of those screwed up, iDrive-powered BMWs). That is the closest engineering gets to perfection when it comes to design. Computers and software are too far away from that, so what you should do when building your office is to minimize your misery. That said, choose things that are simple to use and that integrate well with each other. I will state here the importance of choosing a good platform over good single devices. Today there are 3 that are usable: Apple, Google and Microsoft. So, choose the one you are most comfortable with and stick to it. And never mix them up — that is a waste of time and money. A final remark: gadgets have limited lifetime, so replacing them within a platform will save you a lot of time, even though it may cost a bit more.
The last item doesn’t need too much commentary. Just take a look at your energy bill and it will all make sense. When choosing devices to equip your office, keep a close eye on the consumption numbers. And use energy management systems if you can to monitor the load and make sure everything is working like clockwork. Your bank account, and the environment, will thank for that.
Office design: wrap-up
To wrap-up, I will walk you through my choices, so you can see the rationale behind all this. Let’s start with a short story.
Back in 2009, my office was a mess. I had too much stuff and they didn’t necessarily integrated with each other (not without considerable tinkering, at least). I had a Windows PC, a Windows/Gentoo Linux laptop, a MacBook Pro, a BlackBerry smartphone and a Windows Mobile PDA. Needless to say, I spent too much time getting things in sync. So I decided to make things uniform and that’s when I started researching about platforms. By that time, there were only two usable ones: Apple and Google. Microsoft didn’t have a decent mobile solution at the time, so it was out. Google had the cost advantage and Apple had the convenience on its side. After making some math, I decided that the time I would save was worth more than the price differences over time. And I knew I was going to join the most closed platform of them all as well. Besides the convenience, one thing that weighed in favor of Apple was the fact that I would be able to have the same devices for both work and personal use (I’ll detail how I keep things separate in a minute). In other words, I suddenly was in control of my own productivity in all levels.
So I started migrating the infrastructure to the Apple platform. I already had the MacBook Pro, which became my workstation, got an iPhone 3GS and a MobileMe subscription for cloud-based contacts/calendar and wireless internet sync. My Windows/Linux PCs became support tools and I got rid of the BlackBerry and the PDA. This was the backbone of my office at the time. Additional tools I incorporated were:
- OmniFocus (GTD task manager) and Evernote (notes): great productivity tools and both were cloud-based and had iPhone OS versions.
- Instapaper: for read-it-later functionality in the browser. Also cloud-based and present on the iPhone.
- Dropbox: my cloud drive for non-confidential, non-sensitive files.
- Trillian Astra Pro: multi-network IM, cloud-based, for seamless transition between computers and mobile devices.
- Plus I created a server-side, e-mail filtering scheme that makes only the really, really important messages reach my inbox. Everything else is categorized and goes to a particular folder for later reading (or to the trash altogether). This means that I could reduce my e-mails from 300+ messages/day in the inbox to a mere 10-20 a day, which improves productivity.
With the release of Windows 7, the Microsoft OS actually became very reliable, the desktop PC got a storage and memory upgrade (1.5TB and 8GB RAM) and became a VM server, which helped me a lot with testing, since I didn’t have to rely on remote machines in the lab anymore — this is one good thing about working with open source software: almost no company-confidential code. The PC it is exactly the same up to today, except for an external 2TB eSATA storage, which I use for automatic backups. This machine is always off, since it consumes a lot of energy and generates too much noise and heat, and I just turn it on when I need it. Windows also can get the benefits of MobileMe, so this PC also had access to all the info in the cloud.
On the Linux front, I got rid of Gentoo and switched to Ubuntu, for the sake of convenience. By early 2010, the only thing I hadn’t upgraded was the network infrastructure, which as was a pitiful 100 Mbps cable and 54 Mbps 802.11g wireless. Oh, and the iPad had joined the party as well, and became my main reading device.
Now, back to the current office. I started planning this is mid-2010. I decided to build it from scratch, so I got rid of all the furniture and started thinking about what kind of environment I would like to work in. I had already figured out all the physical space issues before, so I had blinders, decent artificial light and the carpet already. This left me with the furniture choices.
I always wanted an all-white office, with small shades of black. But in this case, I already had a very beautiful (and expensive) wooden floor, so I decided to go for a wooden desk and bookshelf. In the previous office, I had a mahogany desk, which I thought it was too dark. So I went for a lighter tone and got this L-shaped desk with wooden top and black-painted aluminium structure. The bookshelf follows the same color pattern and they both match the floor and the blinders. I haven’t changed the carpet, whiteboard and chair. The carpet is needed for muffling the noise of my PC when that is on (plus it makes it more comfortable to take the shoes off), whiteboard is a must for brainstorming and the chair was still good enough for another 3 or 4 years.
On the gadgets side, I bought an extra 23” LED Samsung monitor for the Mac and started using the 3-monitor setup I still adopt today, now with an iMac instead of a MacBook Pro. Having two monitors on the workstation really improves productivity, as it reduces window-switching.
I unified the sound system for the Mac and Windows PC (I already had an iMac in sight at the time, but not the resources) with a Bose Companion V speaker set — USB on the Mac, audio-out on Windows. This way, I got a decent quality sound system for my office, which is a must for me, since I like to do some kinds of work listening to music.
And I got rid of the landline forever — the iPhone 4 became my only phone and it sits on an Universal Dock for easy recharging when needed. A pair of Sennheiser earbuds are used for hands-free phone calls. This is a must, since 90% of my meetings are conference calls.
I also got the 11” MacBook Air for the ultimate mobility when I’m on the road (since I had plans for getting an iMac for my workstation), replaced my old printer for a new one that matched the office’s decoration (and old one broke down) and installed a Time Capsule as my router and network backup solution — as a consequence, I got super-fast cable and wireless networking, which is a must when you are using VNC and transferring large files between computers a lot. The Apple platform migration was then completed and now I have all my devices integrated with very minimum setup. Later I completed the office hardware side with an iMac and a big storage for it, since it is also my media center and photo and video editing workstation.
All the equipment is very energy-efficient. That was the rationale behind the choosing of LED monitors and the iMac. Everything is connected to UPS and surge-protection units, which are monitored by the workstations. I can keep a minimum office setup working for 24h in a row (or 3 working days) without power. Speaking of power, I also installed desk-level power sockets for laptops and gadgets, so I don’t need to get under the table every time I need to recharge my iPad or laptop.
And remember when I said gadgets have limited lifetime? Well, I thought the original iPad was too slow and inconvenient (it was the wifi-only model), so I replaced it by a new 3G+wifi iPad 2. I use it mainly for reading — magazines, newspapers and books. Outside the office, I use it for sheet music reading in the studio and as my portable TV in the bedroom.
So, in sum, now I have just to get to the office, close the door, sit down and work. No need for plugging things to the computer, configuring software, manually backing up things and doing any other things that people shouldn’t really be doing. If I need to leave, I pack my MacBook Air, iPad and iPhone and that’s it. Everything I might need is in the cloud (iCloud or the corporate cloud services) and I never need to sync anything.
An easier work life is the reward of planning forward the office, and I am very satisfied with it.