Today’s Home Office - an Answer to the Needs of the Contemporary Home Worker

Abstract: Today, an increasing number of people work from home; people value a relaxed and individual work style where flexibility and mobility are of greatimportance. A home office generates several new requirements of a workplace as conflicts often occur between aesthetical and functional qualities. Psychological factors such as discipline or relaxation are also difficult tohandle when the boundaries between work and spare time are blurred. Qualitative investigations, consisting of ethnographic studies in a carefully selected test group, are made to gain in-depth knowledge about working from home. When these findings are processed common user patterns and behaviours in relation to the workplace are discovered. Further, the priorities and needs that a home office brings are detected and the entire research analysis culminates into a clear project definition and a direction to proceed. The challenge is to design a desk for a workplace situated in a shared room in home environment where the user is working regularly. The concept should both be based on the characteristic user patterns and needs that occur in home offices today, as well as contemporary living routines, trends and values. The product development phase explores how the set up requirements can be met in a physical product and tests the concepts’ potential. It ends up in a final prototype of a desk where the content temporarily can be partly hidden. The desk is designed to encourage an organised behaviour and to offer many opportunities for structure and individual arrangements. Moreover, it separates and defines the two states of work and free time.