Smart Working and the Future of Work

Ecophon 27 February 2019Andy Lake

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andy.lake@flexibility.co.uk

In this session

• Overview – trends impacting work & the workplace

• Screens and surfaces

• Ubiquitous computing

• Data everywhere – but what will you do with it?

• Coworking

• Biophilia and the sensory workplace

• What about the humans?• Where will we be?

• How much will we work?

• What do we want?

Reading the Future

So, now that you’re at this end of the maturity scale ….

Trends impacting work and the workplace

Trends impacting work and the workplace

Collaboration everywhere …… and lots of screens

5-10 year horizon

• More immersive collaboration technologies

• New kinds of screens and intelligent surfaces

• Voice recognition and gesture control

• Remote interaction with systems and live data• Remote monitoring

• Remote diagnostics

• Interaction with automated and intelligent systems in the workplace

• Hands-on work becoming knowledge work

• Augmented and virtual reality

• Wearable systems

• Intelligent building systems

How will/might these impact on workplace design?

Digitisation / Industry 4.0 – who does what and how

Data – in the workplace

Sensors everywhere tracking occupancy, movement, activity, technology use environmental quality etc … with real-time reporting and analysis

Data – reporting, analysis, booking options

Things we can quantify – and analyse

• Space utilisation• Desks

• Meeting rooms

• … All activity-based spaces

• Communal areas

• Wellness areas

• Location of people

• Footfall

• Levels of interaction

• Dwell time

• Productivity (?)

• Movement

• Temperature

• CO2 levels

• Noise

• Light

• Humidity

• Energy use

• Water use

• Waste / recycling

• Print / paper

• Other consumables

• Parking

• Technology use:• Times of use

• Applications

• Where used

• Remote access

• Remote collaboration

• Tech performance

• Tasks completed

• Use of time …

• Healthy work practices ….

Data, data, data

We are well on the way to being “an increasingly quantified society” - Jamie Susskind, Future Politics

But what will we do with all that data (about work, workplace, tech use,

behaviours)?

Workhubs / Coworking / Flexible officing

• Flexible officing expected to grow 25-30% per year over next 5 years –additional 7 million m2 (JLL)

• Predicted to be 30% of corporate portfolios by 2030

• 29% growth in Europe 2017 – 625,000 m2

Growth 2017

Hot trend: Biophilia and the natural office

Biophilia and the natural office

Biophilia and the natural office• Human’s innate attraction to

nature and natural forms

• Planting

• Natural materials (wood, stone)

• Access to natural light

• Natural sounds

• Smells

• Touch

Biophilia – an elephant in the room?

Something strange about removing people from natural environments where they are comfortable to work in concrete, steel and glass boxes, then retrofitting natural features ….

Biophilia and the natural away-from-the-office

Garden pod

Home work setting with a view

e.g. Where will we mine?

Hands-on work becoming knowledge work

Impacts of AI and robotics beyond the workplace

Spatial impacts on where people work of autonomous and (partial) remote-control machines …

Agri-robotics

What is a farmer now?

Inspection robots

For sewers, sites, engines, pipes

Robotics in healthcare

Impacts of working alongside robotic tools and prosthetics – who works where and how … and what kind of spaces are needed?

Robots in charge?

“Just like that!”

Added capacity through AI and robotics

5-10 year horizon – impacts• Impacts on workplaces

• Need to accommodate new activity based around new tools

• Demise of desk-centred factory model of office

• All that data – need for reconfigurability if we are to make good use of it

• Taking some activities out of the workplace

• Bringing others in. Or out in a different place

• Opportunities to be more natural and human-centred

• Sharing space – really sharing it

• Hospitality approach to facilities, i.e. like with coworking

• Desperate need to take non-work workplaces seriously

• Impacts on humans• Quantified objects? Or autonomous agents?

• Balance of skills required will change – need to be tech-curious, to do what we want to do, empowered by technology

• Beware “humans in the gaps” approach to AI

Yesterday’s future office