Before the pandemic, the laptop was considered to be a portable office especially in an employed context. While the tools were in place to work remotely, the duty of the physical place lingered for some time.
There was the office, and then there was remote work, but the default was always to return to the physical place as the office. With restrictions in place, we noticed a great deal of creativity emerging in how people prepared their home for work.
It can be confusing to know how to improve this system. The home office is a complex arrangement of workarounds, because space for the home office used to be an afterthought, and the tools which are needed aren’t necessarily designed for the purpose we need right now.
Global Workplace Analytics predicts that the longer people are required to work at home, the greater the adoption. Their estimate during 2020 was that we would see 25-30% of the workforce working at home on a multiple-days-a-week basis by the end of 2021, and that estimate was largely correct amongst knowledge workers.
Design in context: What are the ways in which we could help people build their home office in a way that suits their work and home life in the best way?
